PCLink Bugs

[Cameron Bradley1436215391]

This is driving me a wee bit insane.

I've encountered a fair few bugs (and they're definitely not features) in my time working with PC-Link (and it has been short so far). These issues have, honestly, had me looking for alternative engine management as it would be an understatement to say I am a bit disappointed.

Fuel table axes: why allow people to select MAF sensor values as axes to a table if you're not going to let them set it up properly. They all stipulate 'Y axis values must be between 0 and 10' or similar, which makes it impossible to configure a fuel table that'll actually run an engine. (I'm not questioning that this stuff is primarily intended for speed-density, but don't _offer_ MAF options if they don't work)

Transient Ignition Retard: Initialising the table to defaults results in an error regarding min=0 and max=0 with regards to row headers, this doesn't make any sense until you go to set up the table and initialise the axis with TPS Delta as the variable. This results in an error when applying: 'Y axis values must be between 0 and 0' (REALLY?!). Permitting it to set it up with a single row of '0', results in a mass of 'Invalid Floating Point Operation' errors when you touch the throttle pedal. (The attached image shows just the first error, this machine is not attached to the vehicle so is unable to replicate the rest of the errors)

My thoughts on the above are:

- If this software was not properly bug-tested before release, what were the testing engineers doing? If you aren't able to set something up a certain way by design, make this clear, don't throw a meaningless error (or crash the program as sometimes occurs).

- If it is not worth the time to develop all these addons that may only suit a few people out of the thousands of customers, perhaps open-source the communications protocol to allow people to develop their own software and extensions for their own application.

As an aside:

Why all the proprietary hotkeys? Anyone coming from a background of using computers on a daily basis expects Ctrl+O to open, Ctrl+S to save, etc. It's honestly a bit odd to expect people to memorise a complete set of different hotkeys just for your application and quite frankly a bit user unfriendly.

Version in use: 4.9.2.1175

[ashesman]

Here are the release notes for the next version of PCLink.  You will notice that there are a number of fixes around the axis setup form.  There was a major change made to the axis setup form at build 4.x.x.1112.  A lot of new code was introduced and as you inferred was obviously not well enough tested.  I am confident these issues are now resolved.  The next release will be made public very soon.

Release Version 4.x.x.1194

New Features

·	Option to disable the startup splash screen.

Changes

·	The default display min, max, warning, error and color values for all runtime parameters have been updated.

·	A warning has been added to prevent the use of incorrect ignition modes for rotary engines.

·	Improvement to some default color theme colors.

Fixes

·	Cell colors did not change in tables when the number was changed.

·	Copy and paste did not work correctly in tables if the block being pasted would go off the edge of the table.

·	An error occurred when doing a Quick View log download if the location where the files were to be saved did not exist.

·	Could not select 'None' as an option in the axis setup form.

·	When clicking apply in the axis setup form, not all axis numbers would be set.

·	Table axis did not work if the same parameter was selected for both X and Y axis.

·	Some axis options had a 'Must be between 0 and 0' error.

·	Q and A or (Page Up and Page Down) did not work correctly on all settings.

·	An error occurred when selecting slip as a table axis.

[Cameron Bradley1436215391]

So this will allow a reasonable range for those that were just incorrectly ranged, or have only the '0 and 0' ones been fixed? I don't honestly understand the point of setting these ranges narrower than either the limits of physics or the scope of the datatype used to hold them as it can be, to say the least, extremely frustrating.

[Scott]

Hi Cameron,

The 'between 0 and 0' ones have been fixed, and the others axis options have had their ranges reviewed to hopefully something much more usable. PCLink 4.9.3 will be available within a couple of days, and you will be able to see for yourself the corrections to this. If there are any ranges you still think are not suitable please let me know and I can pass the information on.

Thanks,

Scott