I have a Trackmate lap system that I purchased with a slot car track. It is probably 5-6years old. (the computer has a Windows 98 system) I've owned it for about 6 months, and I work at one of the places that used to own it and I raced on it at it's previous owners.
Yesterday I did a virus scan on the unit and evrything seemed to work fine. Last night I fired the system up and it wouldn't power up the track when you clicked on the "Practice" mode. It says "Track interface not found. Verify connections and com port numbers in installation settings" Well, as far as I can tell I've done that and still nothing happens. I think it is running a scan program right now, looks like that should take about 45-60 minutes. Any ideas where to start???

Bob Weichbrodt
"Rawafx"
W-S, NC

Hmmm. Could be a number of things but the serial port configuration could be the culprit. While there are no troubleshooting tips specific to TM-DOS, it may be helpful to look at the Windows configuration side issues with getting serial modems to work. These will help you determine whether the device manager configuration in Win98 is seeing all your serial ports (COM ports) and then you can make sure that the one that has the TM interface on it matches what the TM program is expecting. Here are some links to serial modem troubleshooting topics. The information that is relevant is the serial (COM) port stuff, not the modem stuff. If however you have an old serial port modem and put it on the same serial port that the TM interface is on and Windows sees it then the culprit would point to the TM interface.

Other things that consume COM ports besides modems (and can be used to verify whether a COM port is working) are serial mice.

Also, make sure you check your BIOS configuration to make sure all the serial ports are enabled. They are typically only disabled in the BIOS if you put in an old style modem card that consumes one of the built-in COM addresses (COM1 and COM2). Some modem cards provide additional COM ports on the card that can be set to addresses other that COM1 or COM2 while others take over one of those and require that the corresponding built-in COM port be disabled.

Look for "resource conflict" and "device manager" references in the articles on these sites:

http://www.luidia.com/support/comport_problems/comport02b_determine_com.htm

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/190554

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/pca.nsf/docid/199719104413

http://www.scribd.com/doc/566/Troubleshooting-Windows-95-and-98-Modem-Connections

I had the same thing happen to me when mine was new and itwas a bad cable that goes to the computer

Call Daniel at Trackmate toll free 877-756-8227

Thanks!!! I'll give him a call this evening after work.

Bob Weichbrodt
"Rawafx"
W-S, NC