*** Troubleshooting the EZ-ROM CD-ROM Door by Mike Robinson *** October 9, 1994 (This document also applies to the SF-ROM Door) EZ-ROM writes error conditions to file ERROR.LOG in the current directory. Check this file. If it says that EZ-ROM cannot find or read a certain file, check your EZROM.MAS and EZROM.CFG files to locate where this file is specified. Change the path to the file, or relocate the file. Check the spelling of the path and filename carefully. A single misplaced character will cause an error. Verify that the directories and files specified actually do exist. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ *** PROBLEM: EZ-ROM works on local end but the caller sees nothing. *** This is caused by a failure to open the com port. The wrong port is being used, the port is non-standard, or there is a conflict with other hardware or software. EZ-ROM determines the port number to use by reading the door drop file: DOOR.SYS com port number is on line number 1 (EZ-ROM) DORINFOx.DEF com port number is on line number 4 (EZ-ROM) SFFILE.DAT com port number is on line number 6 (SF-ROM) In the batch file that runs EZ-ROM, the first parameter on the command line should be the full path and file name of one of these files. Check the door drop file to be sure that the correct com port number is specified on the indicated file line. You can also force it to use a certain port by using the ForceComPort command in EZROM.MAS. This will override the port specified in the door drop file. If EZ-ROM starts, shows some of the initial displays, and then seems to halt, this is almost always an IRQ conflict with another device or software on the system. The most common such problem is an internal modem and IO card trying to use the same IRQ number. Make sure that nothing else on your system is using the IRQ and IO base address used by EZ-ROM. Other devices which could cause conflicts are a mouse, sound card, CD-ROM card, network card, tape backup card, scanner card, or just about any other piece of "extra" hardware plugged into the computer. SF-ROM uses the same IRQ and IO address as the Spitfire node. It automatically reads this information from the Spitfire SFNODE.DAT file. EZ-ROM uses the "standard" IBM PC clone com port settings which are: COM1 IRQ 4 $03F8 COM2 IRQ 3 $02F8 COM3 IRQ 4 $03E8 COM4 IRQ 3 $02E8 If your com port does not use these settings, then it is called non-standard. Which means that EZ-ROM does not know the correct settings, so you must "tell" EZ-ROM which settings to use. The commands to do this are: ForceComPort 2 ForceIrq 3 ForceBase $02F8 Put these commands in either EZROM.MAS (multi-disk mode) or in EZROM.CFG (single-disk mode). The settings shown above are for a standard COM2. You will have to adjust these to match the settings used on your com port. Note the $ in front of number in the ForceBase command. This $ indicates that it is a hexadecimal number (base16). Also note that if you use a "true blue" IBM PS/2 made by IBM then EZ-ROM detects the PS/2 and uses slightly different settings for COM3 and COM4 only. EZ-ROM will NOT run properly on a serial port board that uses a shared IRQ for more than one com port. Most computers use a standard serial port board with 2 com ports that do not use a shared IRQ. EZ-ROM will work fine on these. The problem of a shared IRQ usually only arises on a multi-port board that has 4 or more ports. It should also be noted that EZ-ROM will not work on a DigiBoard. EZ-ROM will not run properly if FOSSIL driver is used to remap com port settings. EZ-ROM will work fine with a FOSSIL and without a FOSSIL. But EZ-ROM ignores the FOSSIL. So if the FOSSIL has changed a port setting, EZ-ROM will not "know" about the change, so there could be problems. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ *** PROBLEM: Caller attempts to download a file, the download fails. *** There are 4 common reasons why downloads fail. 1. DSZ.EXE or DSZ.COM is not in the current directory and not on the DOS path. The Xmodem, Ymodem, and Zmodem file transfer protocols used by EZ-ROM are supplied by the DSZ program from Omen Technology Incorporated. The shareware version is fully functional and widely available. The current version is available on my BBS as DSZ0920.ZIP. 2. The HoldDir directory specified in EZROM.MAS or EZROM.CFG does not exist. EZ-ROM creates a list of files to download in the HoldDir directory. If the directory does not exist, it cannot create the file and the download fails. Check the spelling of the HoldDir carefully. If it is incorrect by just 1 character, the download will fail. 3. Not enough memory available to run DSZ. You can see how much memory is available by looking at the upper right hand corner of the EZ-ROM screen. Hopefully there is at least 70K there. Also, check to see if there is an ERROR.LOG file created by EZ-ROM. This may give a clue. An error 8 during DSZ means not enough memory. One common way to gain more memory is to swap the BBS out of memory before running EZ-ROM. If your BBS cannot do this, the widely available shareware program Shroom (Shell Room) by Davis Augustine can swap any program out of memory. Available on my BBS as SHROM23A.ZIP. 4. Incorrect usage of the Handshake command in EZROM.MAS or EZROM.CFG. EZ-ROM automatically uses the lowercase "ha cts" command by default. So unless you want to change the handshake, Do NOT use a handshake command at all. If you do use it, you must be sure that the command is valid. Several people have tried this: Handshake HA CTS This is incorrect. DSZ is case-sensitive. If you use this command as shown above, the download will fail. Most commands must be lower case like this: Handshake ha cts ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ *** PROBLEM: No tag letters displayed when viewing file lists. *** See the TagChar command in EZROM.DOC. If a line in a file list has a valid TagChar in the correct position, then that line is displayed in color and assigned a tag letter. So all you need to do is find a character that repeats in the same position on every line which has a file name. Then use the TagChar command to specify this character and position. Here are some examples: TagChar 26 - Lines which contain a dash(-) at position 26 will be colorized and assigned a tag letter. Lines which do NOT contain this character at this position are assumed to be header lines or extended description lines. TagChar ALL Every line will be colorized and assigned a tag letter no matter what is on the line. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ *** PROBLEM: I registered EZ-ROM and now the ownload command no longer appears on the menu and callers cannot download. The caller is either over his daily download limit or the daily download limits are set too low. Now that EZ-ROM is registered it is enforcing the daily download limits. It gets these limits from DOOR.SYS lines 31 (kilobytes per day) and line 46 (files per day). Some BBS systems put a 0 on either of these lines. So EZ-ROM does it's job and enforces a limit of 0. These is a solution. See the LIMIT command in EZROM.DOC. It will allow you to set your own limits in EZROM.MAS or EZROM.CFG. The limits you set with the LIMIT command will override the values in DOOR.SYS. If you use DORINFOx.DEF then EZ-ROM will use the default limits of 10 files and 2000K per day unless you use the LIMIT command. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ *** PROBLEM: I registered EZ-ROM, but it is not writing a log file of the caller's activities in the door. Reasons why log may not be written: 1. Program running in local mode. Log not written in local mode. 2. Program not registered. 3. Log OFF command used. 4. LogName command is spelled wrong. 5. LogName command is preceded by a semicolon or it is not all the way up against the left margin of EZROM.MAS. 6. The directory specified for the log is spelled wrong and/or does not exist. 7. The name of the log file is spelled wrong and/or it is not a legal DOS file name. 8. Some other program is deleting the log. TriBBS uses a temporary log for each node. After a caller logs off, the temporary log is copied to the main log. The temporary log is then deleted.