Serial To Excel VBA without MSCOMM - vba

I am trying to pull data from a measurement device with an RS232 output. I am unable to use MSCOMM due to restrictions.
I have read multiple forums referencing the following two posts:
1. http://www.thescarms.com/vbasic/commio.aspx
2. http://dev.emcelettronica.com/serial-port-communication-in-excel-vba
The first link is a little over my head and I am getting errors during the try catch portion when receiving data.
The second link does not seem to work anymore.
Does anyone have a good recommendation?
Thank you.

The longstanding classic solution for such applications is TalTech's WinWedge I believe.
(We are not affiliated, rather the opposite. But I believe our own Docklight DLL would be oversized for this. Still, if you want, you can add an example RS232 data sequence from your device to this post here, and I can maybe put together a free example script for a MSExcel table import or at least a .csv file generator).

Related

Can’t Open Reports in a Microsoft Access Database

I have a problem. I want to open a report in my microsoft access file in design form, but MS Access doesnt open this report. I dont get any error message, and without freezing.
I have no problem with other report files, but for a special report I have this problem. How can I solve this problem?
As much as you probably don't want to hear this, I have encountered this a number of times and the best solution was to create a new database and copy each item into it one-by-one. Sometimes a database carries enough corruption so that even a compact/repair doesn't remove it.
As a "first line of defense" you can try using the undocumented Decompile switch, but it's my experience that it rarely works. Still, it's worth a shot since it's quick and simple.

custom error pages for IBM Domino iNotes

we're currently customizing iNotes for a customer (platform currently is Domino 9). We almost reached our goals, but one thing that's on our todo list I can't really figure out: they want us to also customize any possible error pages; see the following example screenshot:
This and other similar pages seem to come from the central Forms9.nsf which I'd love to leave as it is. We so far tried domcfg.nsf mappings, but as this is an iNotes internal error it obviously can't work; I also tried to figure out a way to put seomething into our customized Forms9_x.nsf but without any hint this is too abstract for me.
So my questions are:
has anyone ever done this?
what options do we have (apart from "hacking" Forms9.nsf)?
Many thanks in advance...
Update:
After continuing to play with domcfg mappings I suddenly saw a first result; not sure what's the difference to the first attempts, though; maybe moving the error form to Forms9_x.nsf did the trick? I'll keep investigating and post an answer if I can find one...
Alright, this has been an afternoon of wild guessing and hacking along, but finally I think I found it:
first of all, my playing around with domcfg mappings didn't have to do with solving the problem; instead, I just by chance had put my error page form into my Forms9_x.nsf and named it $$ReturnGeneralError (that's simply the name used in Forms9.nsf...; I completely had forgotton about those 4 pre-defined form names back from Domino 5 times).
What did not work was the old method of simply including a text file named MessageString to display the exact error message returned from the server; obviously iNotes is handling those error strings differently.
After a few hours of testing, and comparing codes between the standard iNotes error page and mine I finally found it: include some iNotes specific computed text into the page, in my case that is
#{{MessageString}; html}
See this document for some details (last row in the table)
Hopefully this can help someone else as well...

Detect USB - Insert/Remove - VB.NET on Windows CE 6.0

I'm becoming mad trying to figure out how to resolve this task. My goal is pretty easy, copy a file on the USB stick every time that it is inserted and then release the USB stick turning off the LED. What is the best way to solve it?
1) I found this article
http://geekswithblogs.net/BruceEitman/archive/2008/06/13/windows-ce-monitoring-for-disk-insertion-to-add-support-for.aspx
or
http://geekswithblogs.net/BruceEitman/archive/2008/06/13/windows-ce-monitoring-for-disk-insertion-to-add-support-for.aspx
but I can't translate it on VB.NET project.
2) Then I read that is enough to use RequestDeviceNotifications for block devices. But How can I do that in VB.NET?
I would like to avoid OpenNetCF if possible.
Thank you
Since you don't want to "use OpenNETCF" I assume that you don't want to use any libraries or capabilities not built in to the CF. We'll skip the argument of that silliness and the "value of your time" discussion and take that as a requirement.
What you need to do is:
Use P/Invoke to call CreateMsgQueue. That's going to give you back a Handle. You'll probably want to do CloseMsgQueue as well for completeness
P/Invoke RequestDeviceNotifications and pass it the handle returned from #1 above along with the DEVCLASS GUID value for the device notifications you want - probably STORE_MOUNT_GUID. Again, adding StopDeviceNotifications for completeness is a good idea.
At that point you'll get a message on the queue whenever a insert or remove happens. You then call ReadMsgQueue to get the DEVDETAIL data in the message.
Parse the DEVDETAIL and look at the fAttached member.
It'd take me a while to write that for you, so you'll need to do this on your own.
Start writing the project, find P/Invoke routines for the calls you need (like FindFirstFile and CreateProcess). On SO, have a look at Storage Card Problem In windows mobile and How to register form for WM_DEVICECHANGE message in windows mobile.
You are only going to be dead in the water if you can not find a particular call that you can't make.
As you work through your project, post (or search for) the actual problems you run into.
Otherwise, it sounds like you are asking someone to write the project and hand it to you.

Visusal Basic Script: Trying to obtain comments/description dll information

I have a question that pertains to scripting. For the sake of clarity I'll just start off with a bit of what I'm trying to do. We have a number of testing environments and projects going on in each environment that trying to keep track of what is where is becoming increasingly difficult.
In order to try and straighten this out I was going to create a script that would pull the comments/description (that is where our developers put the code branch,project name,and date of the build into. This is what we use for versioning) of the dll. Then I would dump this information into a simple table on an html page which would be pulled as a web part.
I was using VBS to perform this and I was able to successfully pull a version number and dump it into an HTML page. However, I have not been able to find any information on how to do this for the comments or description (using Server 2k3 and 2k8) fields.
So my question is if there is a way to pull this information using VBS, or would there be a better scripting language that would allow this to be done.
Thanks very much in advance.
I don't think exactly what you're asking for is possible, however this may be helpful:
http://www.activexperts.com/activmonitor/windowsmanagement/adminscripts/filesfolders/files/

VGA programming without using interrupt (only registers)

I want to develop a VGA graphics driver (for Linux(Ubuntu)) with support for the basic primitives such as putpixel, drawline, fillrect and bitblt. I want to do it in protected mode.
I´ve been googling for a week and the following four links are the best I have found:
http://www.brackeen....vga/basics.html
http://www.osdever.n...VGA/vga/vga.htm
http://bos.asmhacker...sing%20bios.htm
Unfortunately, the first one uses a BIOS call so I cannot use it. The second link has lots of information on the VGA registers but no examples showing how to make them work together. The third example is a example to switch in 13h mode but i've tried it and nothing happened. Can you guys give me a hint? Thanks in advance!
--Vincenzo
my code at http://bos.asmhackers.net/docs/vga_without_bios/snippet_5/vga.php
works fine if you are in 32bit mode with full hardware access. Unfortunately I doubt that any Linux variant will let you directly access the VGA ports. I'm not sure how you develop this driver, but if you made sure that you have full access to the VGA ports it should work. In my example code I only switch between mode 0x03 and 0x13, but in the folders above you'll be able to find port values for most other common VGA modes, as well as C code to do the switch if you prefer that.
Christoffer code include files are found BOS operating system source code like text.inc and font8x16.inc
http://bos.asmhackers.net/downloads.php
This is coming many many years later but I think it's still very relevant and if somebody is struggling I hope they can find it useful.
First of all, it is completely possible to configure VGA only using registers without interrupts, as hard as it may be. A useful resource about registers and how to configure them can be found here, but unless you have a ton of time to spare to learn how to properly do all of it, move to the following section.
If you wish to really learn how to do it, I suggest going through with the documentation provided earlier. However, some of it is already done!
Chris Giese did a great job demonstrating exactly how to do this for MS-DOS system, and while you may think that doesn't help you, it really does.
Chris's code can be found here. If you want another useful codes check here as well.
Now, while it only works for MS-DOS it's actually easy to convert to other systems. The code already contains all data needed to configure the registers in many different modes. And that's the part that saves you a ton of time going through documentation.
The code uses functions outportb, inportb, which are MS-DOS functions, to write/read single byte to/from a port. Therefore, you have to redefine these functions to read/write for your own system. Redefinition complexity depends on the system you operate on.
In addition, you will also need to provide means to write to physical memory region between 0xA0000-0xBFFFF which corresponds to standard VGA memory area. Once you have that allocated, you need to also redefine the functions pokeb pokew peekb which will help you output things (text or pixel data) on the screen.
One last note: the code is already defined to work with many different modes including both text and display modes.