Confounded

So we troubleshot the Compu-Dobby Saturday before last. 


The good news is that the Compu-Dobby does function as far as I can tell, and so do all sixteen solenoids in the solenoid box.  However, I have been unsuccessful in efforts to get the weaving software on the laptop to talk to the Compu-Dobby.  So the Compu-Dobby can weave tabby, via a setting on the box itself, rather than from the computer, and that works fine. 


I'm in the middle of diagnostics.  Thought it might be the RS-232 cable, so we got a new one, only to find that they had sent a 15-pin rather than a 9-pin; but they express-mailed the 9-pin replacement yesterday and I tried it out.  The computer *does* see that there is something connected to it as a peripheral, but it doesn't know what it is and cannot seem to 'talk' to it.  Now that I can pretty much confirm that it's not the cable, it's onto the next diagnostic.


Possibilities I've thought of:


1) System software on the laptop.
2) Something to do with the licensing of the weaving software, though Tien downloaded the demo of WeavePoint for me and that should work, but doesn't...so it's likely not that.
3) Might be something to do with the 9-pin port on the Compu-Dobby itself.  Ugh...
4) Might be something to do with the settings on the program that I have overlooked.
5) A missing driver of something.
6) Maybe WeaveMaker or another software will work on the laptop instead of WeavePoint.


There are probably more possibilities I haven't thought of, or haven't thought likely.  I tend to fall victim to my own magical thinking, and it helped when Tien reminded me that there is surely a cause, and causes can be found and fixed.  It's easy for me to fall back into old thinking like "It's broken somehow, don't know why, and that's that".  I had a quick little pep talk with myself this weekend to remind me of this and also to caution myself against being too hasty to give up, which has always been one of my bad qualities.  


Tonight I may try to load the software onto another PC laptop and test it.    If it turns out I have to buy new software, then I'll do so, though it would  be an expense. 


I may have to call AVL for guidance.  Hopefully that won't be too expensive either!


If the Compu-Dobby itself is somehow broken, I may or may not be able to fix/afford to have it fixed.  Worst-case scenario would be that I just can't get the Compu-Dobby to do anything other than tabby, in which case I will have to re-attach the mechanical dobby.  That's not so bad, as more than a year of weaving on my wonderful AVL has shown me.  But even that - I feel a small kernel of protest in my gut about even imagining a worst-case scenario, because I feel do a hunch under it all that whatever is wrong with the Compu-Dobby set up is a fixable problem.


I *can* say that a lot of the potential issues I had earlier dreaded turned out to be fine, such as all the dobby fingers working, all the solenoids working, finding the proper optimum distance for the solenoids from the dobby fingers; whether the Compu-Dobby would work at all (it does!), whether the cables would be any good, etc.  Those are good things to remind myself of!