| How to configure boards with ISA interface? |
To configure C102/C104/C168 series and C114HI multiport board, you must use IO-IRQ.EXE under DOS. You may find IO-IRQ.EXE in following driver disks.
- DOS driver disk
- WindowsNT/95 driver disk
IO-IRQ.EXE can be executed under the following operating systems.
- MS-DOS or other compatible DOS
- Windows95/98 DOS prompt
Please note that IO-IRQ.EXE is not executable under WindowsNT DOS prompt due to I/O protection of WindowsNT. The procedure to configure 102/C104/C168 is as below.
Power off PC. Set JP1=short for the Moxa board and insert it into the PC.
Power on and enter DOS or Windows95.
Run IO-IRQ.EXE. Please enter "A700" as CAP address and then configure I/O addresses, Interrupt Vector, and IRQ.
Power off PC and set JP1=open.
Reboot PC for driver configuration. |
| [questions] |
| How to test Moxa multiport boards under DOS system? |
There're 2 approaches to test Moxa multiport board under DOS system if the DOS driver is properly installed.
In /bin of Moxa driver directory, you may find a utility - DIAGNOSE.EXE. Diagnose can test specified Moxa board and report you the result.
In /bin of Moxa driver directory, you may use Internal Loopback or CONNECT function in SCOPE.EXE to test if the Moxa port is normal. |
| [questions] |
| There're 2 RS-232 serial ports in a PC. How to increase more RS-232 ports? |
| You may add a multiport board to increase the number of serial ports, generally called COM port, on your system. |
| [questions] |
| There are 2 RS-232 serial ports and are not RS-422 or RS-485 ports in a PC. How to set RS-422 or RS-485 ports in a PC? |
| You may add a multiport board, which had RS-422 or RS-485 ports, in your PC. |
| [questions] |
| What's multiport board? |
| Multiport board is an interface board for the purpose of increasing the number of serial communication port, I.e. RS-232, RS-422 or RS-485 compliant communication ports, for your PC. |
| [questions] |
| What's the characteristics and transmission distance of RS-232 interface? |
According to the specification of EIA-232 standard, the transmission characteristics are as follows. | Baud Rate (bps) | Distance (Meter) | | 2400 | 60 | | 4800 | 30 | | 9600 | 15 | | 19200 | 7.5 | | 38400 | 3.8 | | 57600 | 1.9 | | 115200 | 0.9 |
|
| [questions] |
| What's the function for the jumper (JP1) on Moxa ISA series boards? |
| When configuring IO-IRQ.EXE, you'll be asked for entering a CAP address for entrance of the EEPROM on ISA series board. When JP1 is shorted, the CAP address is "0xA700". The CAP address is the I/O address of first port when JP1 is open. |
| [questions] |
| What's surge protection? |
| Surge protection is realized by a special device for protecting ports from TOV (Transient Over Voltages) which comes from lightning, electrostatic discharges and other forms of high voltage. TOV is always the major factor responsible for damaged components and unreliable data transmission. To improve this problem, we use Transient Voltage Suppresser on our I/O ports to clamp surge voltage to protect ports from TOV. |
| [questions] |
| What's isolation protection? |
| When 2 communication spots are distant, communication devices may be damaged by inequality of ground voltage level. Under the circumstance, we'll need a device to isolate 2 devices and remain normal data communication. Moxa products, including A51, Opt8F, C114HI, C102HIS, adopts Optical Isolator as the key component to achieve isolation protection |
| [questions] |
| What's termination resistor? When and how to use it? |
For RS-422/485 serial communications, when an electrical signal travels through two different resistance junctions in a transmission line, the impedance mismatch will sometimes cause signal reflection. Signal reflection causes signal distortion, which in turn will contribute communication errors. The solution to this problem is to establish the same impedance at the line ends as in the line itself by terminating them with resistors.
The value of the termination should equal to the characteristic impedance of the transmission line. The resistors should be added near the receiving side in parallel with positive and negative polarity. |
| [questions] |
| How to make sure Moxa multiport boards works fine after Windows95 driver installed and rebooted? |
| You may find the software for Win95/NT names Procommlib. In which a utility, Diagnostic, will be found. Run Diagnostic and you'll get a report for the status of the Moxa multiport. |
| [questions] |
| How to make sure Moxa multiport boards works fine after WindowsNT driver installed and rebooted? |
Enter [System Administration Utilities][Event Viewer], and find the log message. The log message tells you the status of driver initialization at each system reboot.
For C102/C104/C168/C114HI non-intelligent board, please check "System" category and find latest log issued by "mxser".
For C168H/PCI, please check "System" category and find latest log issued by "mxserp".
For C218plus/C320Turbo, please check "Application" category and find latest log issued by "mxload". |
| [questions] |
| When DOS driver of C102/C104/C168 loaded, error message "None serial port found" appears. |
| DOS driver of C102/C104/C168 series and C114HI can't detect the board according to your driver configuration. Hardware configuration of the board and driver configuration in SETUP.EXE mismatches. Please make sure the configuration in IO-IRQ.EXE is identical to that in SETUP.EXE. |
| [questions] |
| Windows95 driver of C102/C104/C168 and C114HI installed. After system reboot, error message "Can not find the configured C102/C104/C168 (CAP=0x0180) !" appears. |
| Windows95 driver of C102/C104/C114/C168 series and C114HI can't detect the board at given I/O addresses. There're several causes lead to such situation. Some partial decoded network board may interfere with our board. Please avoid from using 0x300 as I/O address for those network boards. Check hardware configuration of C102/C104/C168 board by IO-IRQ.EXE. Then make sure the hardware configuration, including I/O addresses for each port, Interrupt Vector, IRQ, is identical to that of the driver. The I/O addresses may conflict with other devices, please change another set of I/O address such as I/O:0x280, Interrupt Vector:0x2C0. |
| [questions] |
| C104/C168 series board and driver installed under WindowsNT. After reboot, error message "Can not find the configured C102/C104/C168 (CAP=0x0180)!" appears in EventLog. |
WindowsNT driver of C102/C104/C168 series and C114HI can't detect the board at given I/O addresses. There're several causes lead to such situation.
Some partial decoded network board may interfere with our board. Please avoid from using 0x300 as I/O address for those network boards.
Check hardware configuration of C102/C104/C168 board by IO-IRQ.EXE. Then make sure the hardware configuration, including I/O address for each port, Interrupt Vector, IRQ, is identical to that of driver.
The I/O addresses may conflict with other devices, please change another set of I/O address such as I/O:0x280, Interrupt Vector:0x2C0. |
| [questions] |
| C218/C218Turbo/C320/C320Turbo series board and driver installed under DOS. Error message "WARNING! Interrupt test failed" appears after executing MX-DRV.EXE. |
C218/C218Turbo/C320/C320Turbo driver found that the configured IRQ couldn't be activated during testing. Possible reasons and solutions are as follows.
IRQ number assigned in driver is not identical to IRQ setting on the Moxa board.
The assigned IRQ is occupied by other PCI devices. Please reboot and enter BIOS. Go to PCI/PnP configuration menu and set the IRQ as "Legacy ISA" device.
The assigned IRQ is occupied by other ISA devices. If you're not sure which device cause the situation, please simply change another IRQ for Moxa board. |
| [questions] |
| C218/C218Turbo/C320/C320Turbo series board and driver installed under DOS. Error message "bank [CC00] not found" appears after executing MX-DRV.EXE. |
Make sure you're using the right driver. Please note that C320/C218plus board uses version 3.x driver while C320Turbo uses version 4.x driver and C218Turbo uses version 5.x driver.
Check if the card is properly plugged into ISA/EISA bus slot.
Check if the Memory Bank and IRQ setting by executing SETUP program is the same as the memory bank address setting on board.
Examine your PC hardware configuration thoroughly such as Shadow RAM, SCSI device configuration, network interface card, VGA adaptor, and so on. Any device which occupies memory bank should be prevented from colliding with the memory bank used by MOXA intelligent boards.
Examine your PC software configuration for memory management program such as EMM386.exe and make sure they will not use the memory bank used by MOXA intelligent boards.
For example, if the memory bank of C320/C218 set to c8000, the EMM386.EXE in CONFIG.SYS should be set as follows.
device=c:/dos/emm386.exe X=c800-cbff noems (or ram)
Please note that you should reserve memory bank for the length at lease 16k bytes for each C218/C320 boards.
Try the memory banks other than C800H, CC00H. Some motherboard BIOS may occupy these memory areas. |
| [questions] |
| C320/C320Turbo series board and Windows95 driver installed under Windows95. Error message "Moxa C320 number of UART module mismatch!" appears after reboot. |
Total port number specified in C320 driver is not identical to real connected port number. Please recheck the total port number connected and correct it in driver configuration.
UART module or extensive module is not well connected.
Cable between Basic/CPU module and extensive module is not connected. |
| [questions] |
| C320/C320Turbo series board and Windows95 driver installed under Windows95. Error message "Moxa C320 CPU Modules not found!" appears after reboot. |
he link cable between control board and CPU module/Basic module is not well connected or missing.
Power of CPU module/Basic module is not on. |
| [questions] |
| C218/C218Turbo/C320/C320Turbo series board and Windows95 driver installed under Windows95. Error message "Moxa C218/C320 [CC000] interrupt failure!" appears after reboot. |
IRQ number assigned in driver is not identical to IRQ setting on the Moxa board.
The assigned IRQ is occupied by other PCI devices. Please reboot and enter BIOS. Go to PCI/PnP configuration menu and set the IRQ as "Legacy ISA" device.
The assigned IRQ is occupied by other ISA devices. If you're not sure which device cause the situation, please simply change another IRQ for Moxa board. |
| [questions] |
| C218/C218Turbo/C320/C320Turbo series board and driver installed under WindowsNT. After reboot, error message "MOXA C218/C320 Series (CC000) not found!" appears in EventLog. |
Make sure you're using the right driver. Please note that C320/C218plus board uses version 3.x driver while C320Turbo uses version 4.x driver and C218Turbo uses version 5.x driver.
Check if the card is properly plugged into ISA/EISA bus slot.
Check if the Memory Bank and IRQ settings in [control panel][network][adapter] is the same as the memory bank address setting on board.
Examine your PC hardware configuration thoroughly such as Shadow RAM, SCSI device configuration, network interface card, VGA adapter, and so on. Any device which occupies memory bank should be prevented from colliding with the memory bank used by MOXA intelligent boards. You may refer to [WindowsNT Diagnostics] in [System Administrative tools] for more information.
Try the memory banks other than C800H, CC00H. Some motherboard BIOS may occupy these memory |
| [questions] |
| C320/C320Turbo series board and driver installed under WindowsNT. After reboot, error message "MOXA C320 Series (CC000) numbers of UART Modules mismatch!" appears in EventLog. |
Total port number specified in C320/C320Turbo driver is not identical to real connected port number. Please recheck the total port number connected and correct it in driver configuration panel.
The UART module or extensive module is not well connected. |
| [questions] |
| C320/C320Turbo series board and driver installed under WindowsNT. After reboot, error message "MOXA C218/C320 Serial I/O Board addr(CC000): IRQ test failure!" appears in EventLog. |
IRQ number assigned in driver is not identical to IRQ setting on the Moxa board.
The assigned IRQ is occupied by other PCI devices. Please reboot and enter BIOS. Go to PCI/PnP configuration menu and set the IRQ as "Legacy ISA" device.
The assigned IRQ is occupied by other ISA devices. If you're not sure which device cause the situation, please simply change another IRQ for Moxa board. |
| [questions] |
| C218/C218Turbo/C320/C320Turbo series board and UNIX driver installed. The error message "Card not found (CC00)!!" appears during system boot. |
Make sure you're using the right driver. Please note that C320/C218plus board uses version 3.x driver while C320Turbo uses version 4.x driver and C218Turbo uses version 5.x driver.
Check if the card is properly plugged into ISA/EISA bus slot.
Check if the Memory Bank and IRQ settings in [control panel][network][adapter] is the same as the memory bank address setting on board.
Examine your PC hardware configuration thoroughly such as Shadow RAM, SCSI device configuration, network interface card, VGA adapter, and so on. Any device which occupies memory bank should be prevented from colliding with the memory bank used by MOXA intelligent boards.
Try the memory banks other than C800H, CC00H. Some motherboard BIOS may occupy these memory areas. |
| [questions] |
| C218/C218Turbo/C320/C320Turbo series board and UNIX driver installed. The error message "CPU Module not found!!" appears during system boot. |
The link cable between control board and CPU module/Basic module is not well connected or missing.
Power of CPU module/Basic module is not on. |
| [questions] |
| Link error occurs while linking Pcomm library under Borland C++ compiler. |
| Currently, PComm.lib is in Visual C++ format. For Borland C++, please link Pcommb.lib, or use the utility implib.exe of Borland C++ to create another .lib file in Borland C format. You may execute "implib -c PComm.lib PComm.dll" to obtain Borland-compliant library PComm.lib from "PComm.dll". |
| [questions] |
| C104/C168 series and C114HI board installed under Windows95/NT by Quick Installation mode. But network connection becomes very slow. |
| Some network board with partial I/O address decode may conflict with our access address 0xA700 and therefore cause network problem. The solution is to change I/O address of the network board to any I/O addresses, such as 0x320, 0x340, other than 0x300. |
| [questions] |
| Some network adapters with the partial decoding of I/O address can initiate the conflict wiht the Moxa board to the address OxA700. For solution, you can modify I/O address for adapters, which is different from Ox300 (for example, 0x320 or 0x340). |
It happens when given memory bank or the IRQ setting of the C320/C320Turbo conflicts with system BIOS or other devices. Please troubleshoot by the following procedures.
1. Shutdown the power of Windows NT system.
2. Scrutinize the PC hardware configuration, such as Shadow RAM SCSI control board or VGA which may have overlapped memory bank configuration with the C320/C320Turbo. At this point, please check the configuration for above devices in BIOS.
3. Remove C320/C320T from your PC.
4. Reboot the Windows NT system by using Repair Disk or by last known good configuration.
5. Enter [Start] [Programs] [System Management Tools] [WindowsNT Diagnose], then choose tab [Resource], press [Memory] botton. Check if there's any device drivers have conflict memory setting with the C320/C320T driver. Press [IRQ] to check if the assigned IRQ for C320/C320T is occupied by other devices.
6. Change the C320/C320T driver's memory bank or IRQ configuration in [Control Panel] [Network] [Adapter].
7. Reboot the Windows NT system.
8. If the system crash again, please change the memory bank setting by step 5-7.
9. Adjust the C320/C320T H/W configuration using good configuration and install the card into the PC. Reboot system. |
| [questions] |
| Moxa board is installed in my WindowsNT server for RAS(Remote Access Service). However, RAS ports are not working. |
1.MOXA Board Configuration
Enter [Start][Programs][System Management Tools][Event Viewer], Check the item "Application" and find latest "Mxload" event for C218/C320. If you are using C104/C168/C168HPCI, please choose "System" and find latest "Mxser" or "Mxserp" event. If any error message appears, please refer to the troubleshooting procedure respectively.
2.RAS Configuration
Make sure that the maximum transmitting rate of the modem are less than the MOXA Board supports. (C320 Turbo : 460.8K bps; C320: 57.6K bps; C218 Plus : 115.2K bps)
Make sure the MOXA Port for Dial-in are assigned to RAS Server.
The MOXA Port for RAS server are configured as "Receive Call" or "Both of Dial Out and Receive Call".
The protocols that Client supports should be the same as the Server site. |
| [questions] |
| Moxa 8 ports boards with OPT8S doesn't work using standard DB25 cable. |
| Pin2 and Pin14, Pin3 and Pin16 of OPT8S are shorted for the purpose of LED display. The solution is to disconnect the wire of Pin14 and Pin16. |
| [questions] |
| Which operating systems supported by Moxa multiport boards? |
Moxa multiport board supports drivers for most of the popular operating systems, including DOS, Windows95/98, WindowsNT4.0, SCO OpenServer, Unixware, Linux, in the world. For more detail information, please refer to the following web pages.
http://www.moxa.com |
| [questions] |
| How many programming tools available for data serial transmitting for Moxa multiport board under current operating systems? |
DOS
- Moxa API-232/DOS
Windows3.x
- Win16 SDK
- VB 16bit MsCOMM
- Delphi 16bit 3rd party communication object
- Other communication tools compliant with Win16 SDK standard
- Moxa API-232/Win3.x
Windows95/98/NT
- Win32SDK
- VB 32bit MsCOMM
- Delphi 32bit 3rd party communication object
- Other communication tools compliant with Win32 SDK standard
- Moxa Pcomm library
Unix/Linux
- Any communication tools compliant with Unix standard functions. |
| [questions] |
| How many programming tools are supported by Moxa PComm library under Win32 systems? |
PComm library supports following 32bit compilers under Win32 systems, I.e. WindowsNT/95/98.
Visual C++
Borland C++, Borland C++ Builder
Delphi
Visual Basic |
| [questions] |
| Do Moxa device and software have the Y2K problem? |
| All Moxa device and software haven't the Y2K problem, in case you install and utilize these device and software in systems, which have not the Y2K problem. |
| [questions] |
| How to choose C320Turbo Desktop components when RS-232 and RS-422 interface both needed? |
There are a variety of UART modules with different interfaces as well as connector types for your specific needs. You may also use them in combination for a single C320Turbo Desktop system. For example, if you need 8 RS-232 port with female DB25 connector and 8 RS-422 port with female DB25 connector, the following components should be listed in your order list.
C32010T x 1 Control board
C32020T x 1 Link cable
C32030T x 1 CPU module
C32045T x 1 8 port RS-232 extending modules with female connector
C32061T x 1 8 port RS-422 extending modules with female connector |
| [questions] |
| Can C320 and C320Turbo series coexist in the same PC? |
| Negative, C320 and C320Turbo can't coexist in the same PC. |
| [questions] |
| What is the difference between synchronous and asynchronous devices? |
For asynchronous device, each data byte is framed by housekeeping bits. These bits provide the synchronization to the receiving facility each time when it receives data byte. Two wires ("signal" and "ground") are enough to transmit the data. A part of data can come anytime. Asynchronous mode appeared together with the telegraphy and is successfully used up to nowadays.
During the synchronous mode either data are accompanied by the special clock signal by the separate wire, or they are encoding so as clock rate could be extracted from the receiving data. In both cases each data bit is connected to the clock signal and it comes in strictly determined time. |
| [questions] |
| What does the 'null-modem cable' mean? |
he 'null-modem cable' is a cable, which is soldered for example as follows (DB-25 connectors):
1-1
2-3
3-2
4-5
5-4
6-20
7-7
8-20
20-6,8
Three-wire cable with DB-25 connectors has scheme as follows:
2-3
3-2
7-7 |
| [questions] |
