Technical Bulletin #002

November 1, 1995

Original Version

Warning!

Partial photos print on subsequent pages in the Quick Photo Report.

MFM corrected this problem in Build 93. In addition, you can correct this problem by setting the Job Timeout to 0 (zero). Setting the Job Timeout to 0 (zero) forces the PC Access to start a new print job for each page of the report. When you set the Job Timeout to 0 (zero) you will be unable to print a single report longer than 100 pages.

Garbage appears on the screen when you connect to your Master System MLS.

Check Strip High Bit in the Settings box on the MLS Setup window.

Update on the Compaq Presario 924 computer reboot problem

Compaq has notified MFM that there appears to be a design flaw in some of the internal modems installed in this model PC. Compaq is continuing to review the problem and will have final results of their test early next week.

Known incompatible PC's with AzTech Everlock copy protection.

TI 486 Notebooks
Acer Pentium System

Problems printing to HP Desk Jet series printers

The user will see stray text on their screen including text which should be appearing on the printout. Photos will be incomplete and the terminal session may appear to hang. Also, the "Error" indicator will appear at the bottom of the Terminal Window.

The printer driver does not allowing PCAWin to service the incoming data stream fast enough to keep up with flow of data. This results in lost characters and lots of headaches.

This problem shows up on systems ranging from 386 to Pentium and appears to be limited to Windows 3.1 and 3.11 where the user has installed HP's Color Smart drivers. The end user can check to see which driver they have loaded by going into the Window's Control Panel, Printers. If the user selects the driver for their HP printer and chooses "Setup", the setup dialog will say "HP Color Smart".

Some suggestions on things to try:

1. Change the Print Manager priority from Normal/High to Low. This is done through the Window's Control Panel, Print Manager. Select "Options" then "Background Printing". Select "Low" as the priority.

2. Change the Job Timer in PCAWin to 0.

3. Lower the connect speed in PCAWin to 9600.

4. Access the printer setup through the PCAWin Printer Setup function. Select the button which has the blue wrench "Setup". Now change the HP Color Smart driver to manual mode and choose the "Options" button. Now select "Pattern" as the half toning method rather than scatter.

5. Load the standard Windows driver for the printer rather than the HP Color Smart driver. Most of the later HP ink jet printers are compatible with the HP 500, 500C, 550 and 550C Windows print drivers.

6. Upgrade to Windows 95. Windows 95 appears to have much better serial port and multi-tasking support when printing.

Aborted installation of PCAWin leaves corrupt or incomplete DLL's on the user's PC

This problem will manifest itself as error messages from Windows stating that certain files needed to run LAUNCH.EXE or PCAWIN.EXE cannot be found or are corrupt.

This problem happens when a user aborts their installation of PCAWin, especially under Windows 95. The result of aborting the installation can be incomplete and corrupted DLL files on their computer. Re-installing PCAWin will not replace the corrupt DLL's. The DLL files are in \WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory.

You need to have the user exit Windows completely and get to a DOS prompt and go into the \WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory.

Have the user delete the following DLL files:

BC453RTL.DLL
BIDS47.DLL
OWL253.DLL
BIVBX11.DLL

CTL3DV2.DLL
MSOUTLIN.VBX

Now restart Windows and have the user reinstall PCAWin.