Mecanique contact problems

[OzGrant]

G'day All,
As an avid reader of your forum got hooked on PBP and purchased the PBP and Microcode Studio from the Australian distributor, and been having fun with the compiler for a few weeks now. But (there's always a BUT) the Australian distributor doesn't hold stock of the Studio, and it's send directly from Mecanique in the UK.
Well after a few weeks had not received the Studio and spoke to the distributor who could not give me a delivery date or status. etc. I then send an email to sales, then enquires @mecanique.co.uk and at this time have received ZERO replies.
Does anyone have a named email address at mecanique that I can contact.
Also as I have paid for the Studio, does that allow be to legally use a torrent copy (an action I do not really want to do) of the product.
Do not want to put anyone at mecanique on the spot, just want the product that I paid for over a month ago, and start using easyHID.
Tks

[Darrel Taylor]

If the Australian distributor is having it Drop-Shipped, then it's their responsibility to follow through if the process doesn't complete.

Get them on the case, and don't let them pass the buck on to you.
You paid the money to them, not Mecanique. If they can't resolve it, get your money back, and order it from a vendor that has it in stock.

And in the mean time, download the FREE version.
Other than more ICD models (in-circuit-debug) and a Bootloader, it's pretty much the same thing.
.

[OzGrant]

Darrel,
Received he CD today. The distributor informed me it's normal to wait 4 plus (maybe that's where the Studio PLUS derived its name)weeks. I am more peeved that I never got an answer from Mecanique from my emails. Anyway its water under the bridge now, and can finally start to use easyHID.

[Darrel Taylor]

Received he CD today.

Well that's good news!
Now it's behind you, with PlayTime ahead!

The distributor informed me it's normal to wait 4 plus (maybe that's where the Studio PLUS derived its name)weeks.

Maybe I'm biased living in the US, where nothings more than 4-days away, but 4-weeks does sound excessive.

I am more peeved that I never got an answer from Mecanique from my emails. Anyway its water under the bridge now, and can finally start to use easyHID.

I feel for you ... I'd be hot under the collar too, not having access to PBP for a month.
But like you said, "water under the bridge".
Now it's time to dig in and get completely peeved trying to figure it all out.

Regards,

[boroko]

Is it just me, or does anyone else get caught thinking this thread is about a Telemecanique relay (contactor)?

Seems like every time I see it come up, I do a double take....

Bo

[ralfmayr]

Hi quys,
having problems with MCSP results in the same when writing email to them => no answer (i tried 3 email addresses!, twice!).

Maybe somebidy here can help:
I have a courious effect: I have a project with one .bas files and several .inc files. All ok. After compiling the project: one .inc file has disappeared! It is completely deleted from the harddisk, also not to find in trash...!?

What happens there....!?

Regards,
Ralf

[Michael Wakileh]

I remember reading about a similar problem a long time ago. I believe the problem is that the file name length which the program uses to differentiate/recognize files(.bas or .inc) is quite low...wish I could point you to that thread...
Do the files have similar names?

[Melanie]

If in doubt, default to the old MS-DOS (CP/M) file names (which seem to work in almost all cases)...

Rules...

(1) No more than 8 Characters (only Alphabetics, Numerics and Hyphen allowed)
(2) No Spaces
(3) No Hieroglyphics ie Ampersands (&), Asterisks (*), Commas, Full-Stops, Percents (%) or anything else - as many had special meanings within the File, Directory or Search System.
(4) You could have a Full-Stop (Period) and you could then follow that with an extension of up to three characters (in our case it's .BAS or .LST or .HEX etc)

All of which leads me to suspect that the PICBasic Command Line Parser has it's roots further back than you might think.

...and before anybody gets any strange ideas about my age... my Dad brought home an old Heath/Zenith Z89 from a local junk shop to play with one day when I was a kid... thought I might learn something... yeah... I learnt about Hard Sectored Floppy Disks with a 102kb capacity and an operating system called HDOS - real useful!

[ralfmayr]

Hi all,
thanks for the answers. I have filenames between 8 and 16 characters, but the curious thing is, i copied the content of the file into a new one, stored it under a new name, now it works. When i compile the "old" version under MPLAB, nothing happens. Only when using MCSP this effect happens. I tried to contact now several times Mecanique, no successs! Is it a one man show, and this quy is in holiday or what is this for a company!? Never had so bad support like from them....
Regards,
Ralf

[Melanie]

Look if somebody is giving you grief, then change your supplier...

As Aleksandr Orlov (www.comparethemeerkat.com) would say "simples".

[keithdoxey]

Hi all,
thanks for the answers. I have filenames between 8 and 16 characters, but the curious thing is, i copied the content of the file into a new one, stored it under a new name, now it works.

Hi Ralf, just one thought on this....

where are you storing the folder containing all the files ? If its in MyDocument or on the desktop then that could contribute to the problem with filename length as the path would be quite long.

My documents is actually
C:\Documents and Settings\<user_name>\My Documents

likewise the desktop is
C:\Documents and Settings\<user_name>\Desktop

If it is then nested a couple of folders down from that the total path length gets quite big.

[kirtcathey]

About a year ago I wanted EasyHID so forked out funds for the MCSP upgrade, but same thing - the software developer was totally unresponsive to ANY inquiry. However, when I asked for a refund, the refund came through the very next day.

[ralfmayr]

The file was corrupt, don't know why. You could read it, you could edit it, but when compiling it, it was deleted! I copied all into a new file, than it worked! Nothing to do with long file names. All files are in a common include directory on a server, projects are in a seperate direcory calling these common includes. Never been a problem. Only this file was corrupt, don't know why......