FYI Jeff, no motherboard within the last 5 years has had on-boad serial I/O that used a 8550 or 16450 equivalent chip. They're all 16550 or better. Additionally, most people are using standard chipsets like the Intel BX with the design varying only based on the particular OEM (Abit, Asus, Dell, etc). So the chipset is the exact same. I still think that it's a bad design on the part of either ProntoEdit, the cable, or the Pronto's serial port.

And I still haven't been able to reprogram my Pronto in over a month.

Wow! I've been using Virtual PC Win98 emulator on an Apple iBook and have had very similar problems - in particular the "one minute it works, the next it doesn't" - and I'd always assumed these problems were down to using an emulator instead of a real-life PC. The problem really must be in software or the Pronto itself as COM ports and chipsets don't exist in my setup!

I guess it also shows what a good emulator Virtual PC is - in the least desirable way possible!

Daniel,

What are your thoughts on these problem's listed above?

What, all of them? I have not personally had to deal with communications problems with the remote, so I don't have any nifty solutions to offer. It seems it works fine on some systems and not on others. Why? I don't know.

One thing to try, connect the remote to the serial port and then, using a Terminal program, connect to the serial port and then reboot the remote. See what happens, if anything.

Ah, what code do you send to reboot the remote?

More fun this weekend - finally hooked the Pronto up to my new PC. This time I don't get "cannot find", I get a all new dialog box along the lines of "Unexpected Pronto Configuration". Once again, system works fine with all other serial devices. This is with an Athlon 750 on an Asus K7M motherboard.

Daniel, I'll reiterate that this problem is just as bad as the Pronto rebooting problem - some people have it, some don't, but if you have it then it renders the Pronto nearly useless in the grand scheme of things.

What I mean is connect the remote to the PC, connect a terminal program to serial port 1 (or whatever its on) then hit the reset button on the back of the remote. You should see boot up dialogue.

All this proves is that 1) the serial cable works, 2) the serial port works, 3) the remote is communicationg fine.

But what this does NOT check is whether the serial port can operate at a high enough speed without errors.

I too have gotten these errors. I'm on a Mac G4 running VPC 3.0 with win98 emulaion. I had bought a Keyspan USB connector that people here said worked to get the USB port to the DIN 9 thingie. No luck.

Same error message you all have gotten. COM port open but pronto not responding.

Assuming it must be a problem, with the cable thing, I installed VPC on a Powerbook 3400 and purchased another cable-- the Kodak one that ppl here said also worked. Again exact same problem: not able to see the pronto via the COM part.

I am about ready to hurl the damn pronto thru the window and get a better remote!!!!!

I too am having problems connecting the RC5000 to my computer. I get random messages from "COM1: opened but no response from RC5000" to "invalid CCF file"

I have noticed though that it does seem to communicate better when it is on the base (recharging unit)

Also, playing with the com port settings in device manager seem to alter the responses as well.

Add to my post on 5/15/2000 that HK TC1000 will also connect.

Just my 5 cent as well:
I have a Dell Latitude notebook and it worked great before but stopped recently. I had enabled the IR port which is actually causing the Pronto to start up and downloading but it never finished and - if downloading to the pronto - destroys the firmware, etc.

The solution was to disable the IR in the BIOS and it works great again ...

I'm quite surprised. Lots of peaople DO have problems in connecting the Pronto to te PC (including me)and nothing happens. Does anybody know a contact at Philips, which I could call? I'll gladly take that task to contact Philips.

I'm really curious what Philips' official position on that topic is.

Well, my opinion is "serial ports are horrible". They're one of the worst things to troubleshoot, especially to people that really don't know what they are or what's required for them to work (often confusing in itself). It's such an old and inefficient standard, I really hope remote designers start switching over completely to USB.

I just received my new Pronto yesterday. I had it shipped to work so I could play with it sooner. I immediately hooked it up to my PC at work and it worked flawlessly. I disconnected it and took it home where I realized I was out of com ports on my home PC. I installed an ISA i/o card, which added comms 3 and 4. I hooked up the pronto and received the following messages:
Com1 does not support 115200 baud
Com2 does not support 115200 baud
Com3 opened but no response from Pronto
Com4 opened but no response from Pronto

For one thing, I know Com1 & Com2 support 115200 as they have 16550 uarts. My external modem and X-10 computer interface both work flawlessly on these ports. I installed the pronto on Com4. Unfortunately, it was almost 2:00am this morning and I had to get up for work, so I did not get to try anything else. Wish me luck tonight.

Make sure your new COM ports have unique IRQs. Unlike modern devices, serial ports (except PCI ones) can't share IRQs. Also, make sure Windows is configured correctly to 115200 (which is not the default). Although now that I think of it, mine was set to 9600 for a long time and ProntoEdit didn't complain. I think ProntoEdit uses a lot of its own hardware routines (which is probably one reason it won't accept higher port numbers even though Windows does).