CoCo3 with a Lego Tower and RCX 1.0 brick

[jcoombs]

I have CoCo 3 installed on a machine with Windows 98 and I have been trying to get the USB Lego tower to communicate with the RCX 1.0 brick. I keep getting the following message:

Error: Could not initialise RCX Brick (RCX error (Cannot see the RCX brick, failed), Error code = 6).

I have tried with the brick and the tower at varying distances apart and with a completely clear path. The green light on the tower comes on when CoCo 3 tries to communicate with the brick but there seems to be a problem. Any suggestions of a way of solving this problem.

John Coombs

[Steve]

Hello John,

Error code 6 means that the USB tower is not able to "see" the RCX brick. There are a number of reasons (some are very obvious, but I will list them all for completeness):

• the brick is switched off
  the brick's Ir sensor is not in line-of-sight of the tower
  the brick is too close or too far away from the tower
  the Ir sensor in the brick is broken
  the Ir sensor in the tower is broken

If you have access to another RCX brick or tower, you could eliminate some of these possibilities.

Another thing is to try to upgrade the firmware in the RCX brick. Do this within coco via "view...rcx options...general...download firmware". You will need to find the appropriate firmware file. It is on the CD somewhere - do a search for *.lgo files.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you are still having problems.

[jcoombs]

Steve
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Many thanks for your help. The problem has been resolved - the Ir in the brick was pointing downwards and so not picking up the signals from the tower. It has been realigned and all is now working well.

All the best.

John Coombs