Further to my previous question, I find that I cannot use the GExpertsDebugWindow on a PC which did not previously have Delphi installed.
If I have the following (not unusal, so probably of interest to others) requirements, do I need to roll my own code or is there and existing and free solution?
Must be able to read acorss the network (i.e., PC 1 monitors PC 2's debug output) by specifying PC 2's IP address
If posible, I would like to be able to filter by process name
Thanks in advance for any help
Microsoft's DebugView tool has those features. It can display OutputDebugString output, even from remote systems. Depending on other factors, it can even install itself remotely.
Related
I am trying to connect ICP CON i-7565 (USB<->CAN interface) to a custom made device (supporting CAN2.0B, proved to work with PCL-841 card) Although I think I have configured BAUD and acceptance code/mask correctly I can see CAN no messages coming from the device (ICP provides a tool that should allow me to send and receive CAN messages).
I am new to CAN bus so I appreciate any help regarding how to identify the problem.
I-7565 might be wrong interface for me, I might have misconfigured it, or it is simply broken. Or I am just doing something wrong out of my ignorance. I don't think anyone can help me with my specific problem, so I am rather asking for general information on how are problems with CAN bus identified and analyzed. In TCP/IP for example, you would call ping, you'd recheck your ip and gateway settings etc. What do you do for CAN communication?
Additional info:
OS: Win7 64bit
connector: DB-9 with standard wiring (2,3,7)
Finally I tried to work with different USB<->CAN interface from different manufacturer and it worked like a charm. My old interface was either broken or incompatible for reasons unknown. While working on this problem I learned couple of things about CAN bus and so now I share what I think was the right answer to my original question: How to troubleshoot CAN bus communication?
read manual to your USB-CAN interface
install driver of your interface device and make sure it is working (check device manager, depending on the type of your device you will see new COM port added or new USB controller )
your device should be shipped with it's own test/analysis software (they might call it utility or similar), run it and check if it can connect to your device
CAN communication uses three wires that are referred to as High, Low and Ground and is usually connected with DB-9 connectors where High is linked to pin n. 7, Low to pin n. 2 and Ground to pin n. 3 or 5 - make sure this is connected correctly on both your USB interface and CAN device you want to communicate with
set properties of your connection, these are most of all: CAN type (2.0A or 2.0B) BAUD rate, Acceptance Code and Acceptance Mask
if you've done all of this and still you can see no CAN messages arriving in your utility program, check with a different USB-CAN interface or find some other way to test if your device is actually emitting CAN messages and your USB interface is in fact able to receive them. (this was actually my case)
I'm trying to build a virtual printer.
There are already some answers like this and this.
However my demand is more specific. I just want to create a virtual printer that can be added into the system and can be accessed from any application. On clicking print command, a dialog looks like a real printer pops out and generates a PDF on printing. Then some more actions, like pushing the PDF to my server, are performed.
Do I need to dig into Windows Driver Kit? Or is there any free SDK for this?
Thanks.
Not sure if this question is still relevant to you, but you'd probably want to think about something like this:
Use the WDK (Windows Driver Kit) to create a Unidrv UI plugin. This will allow you to specify UI during the print (for your printer dialogue). The reason why you'd want to show UI here is because it's one of the only printer driver components that runs in the user session (the same process as the printing application). The XPS pipeline and port monitor are both session 0.
If you want to stick to MS convention, you'll do the spool file to PDF conversion in the render filter of the XPS Filter pipeline (this is if you're using an XPSDrv driver). The filter pipeline is where you have the opportunity to modify the XPS spool data coming in and in the final filter, convert it to your output document type (PDF in your case).
To do post print processing, you might want to consider creating a port monitor (again with the WDK) and kicking off a new process to do the post print processing after the port monitor writes out the print output to disk.
Only problem with this approach is that you can't use port monitors in Version 4 drivers (this is the new type of driver in Windows 8). Version 3 drivers still work in Win 8, but I guess they'll be phased out eventually.
Sorry it's probably not very obvious, but as I say, it's a high level overview (and unfortunately driver development is still very complex beyond a simple print to file). Version 4 printer drivers are becoming a lot easier to develop, but unfortunately with the removal of port monitor support and other improvements, it makes it a lot harder to develop anything requiring post processing.
[DISCLAIMER: I'm associated with the Mako SDK R&D team]
I know you asked for a free SDK, unfortunately I don't know of anything that would be suitable, but I know our company offer a Virtual Printer Platform (SDK) which would be good for you (prints to PDF and supports post print processing). You can find more information at the Mako SDK website
Hope this helps a bit anyway. I know printer driver development can be very confusing at times!
After reading up and doing a lot of research, with the aim to setup up something like redmon and use the printer SDK, I have completed the project using this SDK: http://www.novapdf.com/pdf-sdk.html
This solution however will work with windows only.
[I am not affiliated with novaPDF]
I have investigated an OSX version, however this will be a different build, you can probably set something up using this method: http://www.jms1.net/osx-pdf-services.shtml [I have not yet tried this]
i have a device (cash drawer) and i would like to directly communicate with the device. I know that its on address f1. Also openbit is 01.
As i've understood so far, i'd need to send 1 to memory address f1 and the cash drawer should open. Though using asm, i get access violation. Then again i've read that windows does not let you communicate directly to device i/o addresses (need to use win). What would be the correct way to send the data to that address.
Note that i cannot use drivers, because i can't communicate with the driver inside my application.
Op. system is win7.
Thanks in advance!
There was a library called inpout32.dll that allowed direct port access you can find it here
http://logix4u.net/Inpout32.dll_Discussion/write_DELPHI_for_inpout32.dll.html
But i don't know if supports windows 7.
In addition to the excellent suggestions above, check out this delphi code for writing and reading I/O. We have used the GWIOPM to do what you are asking, but note that it will be ok for 32-bit versions of Windows up to W7 etc (as is the case for most 'free' drivers). For 64-bit Windows you need a signed kernel driver. For this there are few things available at the moment. We had to write our own.
Why can't you communicate with the driver from your application? It's the best way for ring 3 application to talk with hardware in a safe manner.
However, if you really insist using drivers, you can try going to ring 0 and do direct access. It's much harder than in previous Windows versions (XP and before) but it's possible. I haven't done it myself since I don't have Windows 7, but you can try asking in asm programming forum anywhere.
I am writing device software for a PC and for that, I want the PC to be usable as a device. When power is supplied, it should switch on without requiring to press the power button. There are power options in BIOS settings but it starts the PC only when its uncleanly shutdown. The other concern I have is how would unclean shutdown affect the hard disk, filesystem and the OS (XP or Linux).
What you need is another PC and one of these devices attached to it.
http://www.relaypros.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=NCD&Category_Code=RS-232_Relay_Boards&gclid=CMna8_yOo5wCFQxM5QodWjoflQ
What you do is send this some RS232 commands for a quick closure on one of the relays. The relay is connected to the Power On pins of the computer you want to control.
You possibly could find another relay contact closure for AC current that allows you to close a relay when AC is flowing, but you would only want to for a brief second.
Unsafe shut downs can be quite detrimental depending where the filesystem state is in. It would be quite hard on the hardware too.
There is also the alternative of booting from the network device. A quick search led to some information on wikipedia. Also, there is something related called preboot execution environment which seem to be something like what you are looking for.
Some software options - these aren't exactly what you asked for, but they might help
Mac OS X: In the energy saver control pane's options tab, select "Restart automatically after a power failue. shutdown -hu now should then bring the system down but give you 5 minutes to remove power to simulate a dirty shutdown, and have the computer reboot automatically when power is restored. It's a slightly dirty shutdown anyway, I think. (ie, it doesn't log you off first)
Windows:
I don't have a windows machine so I can't try this, but you used to be able to tell windows not to power down the computer when you select shut down, but rather to put it in a safe state and display "It is now safe to turn off your computer". Perhaps you could then remove the power and have the bios believe it was a non-clean shutdown, and turn the machine on again when power is restored. There are some instructions on how to do this in Windows Server 2003 at the bottom of this microsoft help document. This forum discussion seems to suggest it might work on XP.
Linux: Not sure about this one, but maybe this website can help.
I haven't tried any of these, so no guarantees that they'll work or work safely.
I need to run an equipment audit and to do that I need to obtain the Windows PC, monitor etc. serial numbers.
So I faced with going to each PC and manually writing down the numbers.
Is there a way I can get this programmatically so each user can run a small program and email me the results?
If this information is anywhere, it'd be in WMI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Management_Instrumentation) - you could write a VBscript script to query this information and save it to a remote share on a server for example.
Generally no. If your computers are all Dell, though, you might be able to get some information (maybe the serial number?) for the PC itself.
The monitor, if it supports VESA EDID (DDC, EDID, EEDID), may also include a 32 bit serial number - which may or may not have any relation to the serial number printed on the monitor's label. You may be able to access this through the display driver - Windows has access to portions of it (to display monitor resolution and timing) so I expect the manufacturer/model/serial number is stashed somewhere as well.
However, making such a program that would work across all systems and monitors would likely be much more work than simply going to each station and recording it, unless all the systems have the same hardware.
Good luck!
-Adam
I am not quite sure if this is exactly what you want, but there is pay software made by DameWare that allows you to easily remote connect to other machines and get lots of information. I haven't used it much yet, but I think there is a way to make batch scripts so it can go pull information like that for you, or see what apps are installed on the machines. Even worse case though, you don't have to run to each machine. (I am assuming you mean SN like the MS product ID)
WMI is definitely the way to go. You can get quite a bit of useful audit information through that API.
Michael Baird appears to have written a VBS script to read the EDID information. The script reads and parses the monitor EDID information from the registry in order to retrieve asset information.
http://cwashington.netreach.net/depo/view.asp?Index=980&ScriptType=vbscript