any ideas

I have nine machines that are used to splice film together. The heart of the machine is a regular pc running a dos based program. The machines have a oem specific i/o boart that connects to other control boards . The other control boards then connect to motors sensors ect.
When an error occurs it pops up on a small monocrome monitor. The question is how can I capture that data going to the monitor and save it so at the end of the shift I can print it out. This will give me a good idea how well the machines are doing instead of only getting operators feedback. Any input would be appreciated. Thank you

May not be much help, but have you contacted the OEM? There may be some serial output option you could purchase. If there is an existing option, may be cheaper than trying to "roll your on".
Then you could print it, capture it, whatever you need.....

They do not offer this option. The old machines we had did. The company that made those went uder about a year ago. We so have serial output that connects to a switch. All our machines connect to the switch then the server. The server runs on software the other company sold us. We can get good inf such as how much was produced off what kind and who did it. The sever can shut our operation down to a stanstill. If not up and running. That is why I would like to try to handle it from the machine end and maybe have another pc storing the data.

You can tap right into the serial line going to the display and bring a copy of the data into a PC serial port.

http://www.bb-elec.com/product_family.asp?FamilyId=33

Get a cheap-o 486 running DOS ($200 or less) and dedicate it to reading the data and printing to a cheap-o printer.

You'll have to write a DOS program (Basic is a good choice, some versions of DOS included Basic) to read the incoming serial data as it comes in. Write the data to a normal DOS Text file.

I can't imagine it being anything other than ASCII. However, the data might include some "Escape Sequences" that are unique to the particular display for placement and/or formatting. You'll probably have to strip-out that stuff.

"Escape Sequences" are preceeded by ASCII code 27 "ESC". The next few characters represent the Escape Sequence Code Number as recognized by the particular device. There will be a delimiter of some kind... something like semi-colon or colon after the Escape Sequence.

As far as formatting the saved data for printing, I should think that your only formatting concerns (for your data file) would be EOL (End of Line) and CR (Carriage Return). Look at an ASCII table for those codes.

If you get a raw text reader like X-Tree you'll be able to read all of the data from the data stream in ASCII. You can then design your "reader program" or "printer program" to strip-out the unwanted stuff.

Note: You could clean out the unwanted stuff as it comes in or you can clean it out just before printing... up to you.

When you are ready to print the data you'll have to push a key to print the data. By pushing the key you are telling the "reading program" to close the file and then print the data.

Having done so, do you want to save that data in the file?

You could delete the file and start over with new data in the nominal file...
-or-
You could save the file with a date stamp and then open a new file with a new date stamp for new data...
-or-
You could re-open the previous file and continue to append new data.

In any case, after printing the file you'll want to restart the "reader", open a file, and resume recording data.


Gee, isn't it strange how having the latest and greatest tends to remove us from being able to perform relatively simple operations?

If you use Terry's suggestion, then you might want to consider this LINK, it will take you to a DOS (windows available) serial tap/monitor/logger.
Kind of pricey, about 350 USD, but works great.

Poor man's 'printscreen'...

If all else fails...

[attachment]

beerchug

-Eric

Thanks Eric for the Picture
That made me laugh.

Eric Nelson, if carries out all ideas that has

All solutions should be infallible !!!