[GRASSLIST:5580] CalComp DrawingBoard III setup

[Roy Sanderson]

Dear Grass-users

I'm having difficulty in setting up a GTCO-CalComp DrawingBoard III
digitizer (model 34240) on GRASS 5.0pre3 running on RedHat 7.3.  The
digitizer is connected into Com2, so I've used the instructions provided by
Christian Kernbach about the Calcomp digitizer setup given in the FAQ
section of the Grass website.

Unfortunately, when going into v.digit, nothing happens when I try to
locate the control points (other than a pathetic little beep from the
digitizer) and then a digitizer read error message on continuing.  Out of
curiosity I've tried installing the gtcc_drv.o, and this seems to work (so
the digitizer could be used with Gimp for example) so the Com port must be
working at least.  However it shouldn't be necessary to use the gtcc_drv.o
file for Grass.

Two possible differences in my setup from that given in the FAQ: First, the
Grass FAQ page recommends referencing the cc95f5_16 file in the digcap
file, and describes this as "CalComp digitizer binary 5".  However, the
digitizers/cc95f5_16 file is headed "ASCII format 5".  The second
difference is that the cc95f5_16 says it is for CalComp 9500 format, which
I can't find listed amongst the 31 digitizer types in my digitizer's help
file.  The particular switch combination suggested in the FAQ corresponds
to CalComp 9100-2 in the digitizer help file.  These two minor differences
may amount to nothing, but having spent many hours trying to puzzle this
out I'm starting to clutch at straws.

As always, any advice gratefully received.
Best wishes
Roy

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Roy Sanderson
Centre for Life Sciences Modelling
Porter Building
University of Newcastle
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU
United Kingdom

Tel: +44 191 222 7789

r.a.sanderson at newcastle.ac.uk
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/clsm

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