Data Collect Lite Program Errors

If you loaded the DCL for DOS program from the Radio-Sky CDROM, the read only attribute may be set for all of the files in the DCL directory. This might also happen with the Windows version of DCL but we haven't yet encountered it. Use the following procedure from Win95 to remove the read only attribute:

You can remove the read only attributes from all the files in the DCL directory very simply in Windows Explorer.

Bring up Windows Explorer and select the DCL directory. All of the files in the DCL directory should appear in the right window of the Windows Explorer utility. Click on one of the files in the right-hand window. Don't double click. Press the control key and the "A" key together. This should select all the files in the directory. Now press the right mouse button while it is over the selected files. A drop down box will appear and near the bottom will be a "Properties" selection. Click on this selection. A dialog box will pop up for all of the files in the directory. Deselect the "Read Only" check box and press OK. This should remove the read only attribute from all of the files.

On a DOS PC the individual files can have the read only attribute removed by using the following command from the DOS prompt:

The dcl.dft (default settings file for the program) has C:\DCL\DATA as an expected directory for where the data will be stored. You should create this directory before you run the program or edit dcl.dft using a text editor before running. If you edit dcl.dft change the above line to read a legitimate directory name.

Overflow error 6 in DCLW

A common source of this error is not having the proper parameters selected for a given driver file. Each driver will have four important values associated with it which relate the raw number received by the computer from the analog to digital device (AtoD) to the voltage which this raw number represents. These four values should be set under the Defaults menu item. They are:

For example, the 12 bit AtoD (MAX187) circuit which we recommend, sends the number 0 to the computer when it detects 0 volts on its input. The same circuit sends the number 4095 to the computer when it detects a voltage of 4.095 volts. Thus for this analog to digital converter the default parameters should be set as shown in the following table of parameter values for the three most commonly used AtoDs. (Driver examples are for the most commonly used printer port.)

Device	driver	Lower Level	Lower Voltage	Upper Level	Upper Voltage
Max187 (12 bit)	12bit378.dvr	0	0	4095	4.095
TLC548 (8 bit)	378h8bit.dvr	0	0	5	5
Radio Shack DVM	wrsdvm2v.dvr	-1999	-1.999	1999	1.999

Unfortunately, these parameters have slightly different names in the header file associated with each data file. In the header file the Lower Level is referred to as the Min Value, the Lower Voltage is called the Min Voltage, the Upper Level is the Max Value, and the Upper Voltage is the Max Voltage. This is certainly confusing and will be corrected in future versions.

Once you change these parameters to suit your AtoD, go to Review and then Header. The correct values should be represented on the header file review screen. Select File and then Save As on the header file review screen, then save the header file as default.hdr. From then on, everything should load correctly when you start the program.

The overflow error can also result when the complete time is not indicated in the time fields in the header file and the "Use Header" option is selected as the logging mode.