EazyLink2 and the Z88 should work straight away, but if it doesn't this section will help you to find out why it doesn't.

Please check these previous sections. Has anything been overlooked?

• Connect the Z88 (or BBC Micro) to the Desktop
• Desktop Installation
• Starting Eazylink on the Z88

Protocol Errors and files do not transfer

This may be an obvious statement but one that is often overlooked. What are the state of your batteries in the Z88? Here are some tell tale signs.

• Check the off-load voltage on each battery. If any of them are lower than 1.1 volt, change all four of them.
• Some Z88 do not show when their batteries are low so do not rely on being informed using that method.
• The display just keeps on getting dimmer and the contrast knob needs to be used to keep the display up
• The display just goes out and you think that the Z88 has just 'timed-out'
• Long files loaded into PipeDream evoke the FAIL message on the top right-hand corner.

There may be outstanding issues that have been address yet. See the outstanding list -https://cambridgez88.jira.com/browse/EAZ

Transferring Files

• File Sizes are not the same
• BBC BASIC binary files

When files are transferred from the Client to the Z88, the file name is correct but the file size is different.

The reason why this has happened is because the  Settings / Preferences / Translation / Enable Z88 to CR/LF line termination mode is ticked. This should only be used on text files and need to be un-ticked when using binary files. See Check that both boxes are un-ticked

Text files (.txt) will be different lengths as the Enable Z88 to CR/LF command will automatically be used.

File CRC Error

Binary files are checked after they have been transferred using a cyclic redundancy check (CRC).

If this fails, this message is displayed.

To check what went wrong,

• Select 'Z88 File Size' to display the file sizes,
• PC-L-SCZ-EPF.63 of 16,384 is different to the file size displayed on the Desktop.
• This is displayed by hovering the mouse over the file-name.

Having this check ensures that if anything goes wrong with the transfer, it will be highlighted.

Check that both boxes are un-clicked when transferring binary files.

Comms Open Error Message

This message is normally seen when a previous version of Eazylink was terminated abnormally or access to the serial port hardware is restricted for administrative user. The cure is to

• Close Eazylink
• Unplug the USB Serial cable from the Desktop computer
• wait 5 seconds for the computer to recognize it has been removed
• Plug the USB Serial cable in again.
• If this still do not solve the problem, restart your operating system (hot-plugging a USB serial adapter on Linux sometime require a reboot before the kernel properly integrates the new device)

Serialport access via Eazylink2 on Linux may require special privileges

If Eazylink2 reports "permission errors" when trying to open a serial port device, this can be fixed very easily by adding your login user to the "dialout" administrative group (this comes from the old days, when terminal access were done via the serial port and would require super-user rights).

Some Linux distributions have the "dialout" group pre-registered for new login-users which enables serial port access out-of-the-box.. Others not. Occasionally, serial port hardware are mapped to other system groups than "dialout". You can identify the system group assigned to serial ports by doing the following:

ls -l /dev/ttyS*  (standard RS-232 cables)


or


ls -l /dev/ttyUSB* (USB serial adapters)

The output might look like this:

crw-rw---- 1 root uucp 188, 0 Mar 18 12:41 /dev/ttyUSB0

The owner is the root user (system administrator on a Linux system). The system group is in the example above "uucp". Typically it will show "dialout".

Do as follows from the command line shell (if the group is called "dialout"), to allow your login user to access the serial port (by adding the user to the system group):

sudo adduser <your-login-user> dialout

Alternatively, use the usermod command to add your login user to the system group that allows read/write access to the serial port:

su<ENTER>
{enter root password}
usermod -a -G dialout <your-login-user>

INTEL Flash Cards

Back in the '90's the slower INTEL chip were used. It has been found that running the Eazylink popdown on these device may cause the application to fail. If this is happening, please consider upgrading the Flash card to the faster AMD version. 

Error messages