Here is a checklist of questions for a customer reporting a problem. Answering these questions will provide
technical support with as much information as possible up front, and enable us to provide a quick and correct
solution. The more information available from you makes it easier to try to reproduce the problem, or to
understand what is causing the problem.
1. Give exact card name as found on the white strip on the back of the card. Also exact names of modules on
card, if applicable. In addition, provide the board and module serial numbers.
2. Verify the DIP switch and jumper settings, if any.
3. What operating system is running on the machine? 32bit or 64bit ?
4. What software is installed (full name)? What version? (Please see the file RevisionHistory.txt or
readme.rev, in the installation folder, or right click on the DLL name in Windows Explorer and select the
Properties/Version or Properties/Details tab to see the revision number.)
5. Verify that the customer did all of the steps to properly install the card under the given operating system,
as explained in file "Installation Instructions.pdf" (formerly named readme.pdf):
• Hardware installation:
o Verify that the card appears in the Device Manager, or perhaps an unknown PCI Device, and
install or update the driver. The latest released hardware drivers are available for download
from www.mil-1553.com/kernel-drivers .
• Software installation:
o Run ExcConfig to assign a device number to the card
o Run one of the demo programs to verify that the card is working. If the demo
program does not run successfully, mark down the name of the demo program
that was run, the function call that failed, and what error message was returned
(error code number or error string [esomething]).
6. If the card is not working, then run ExcConfig (Start | Programs | Excalibur | ExcConfig) and check the
Debug checkbox, click on Save, close, and reboot the system. Then run one of the demo programs, and
search for the file excalbr.log. It may be in the Windows folder or the Windows System subfolder. Email us
this log file. For Windows 2000/XP and newer, also email us the file frontdesk.log or ExcFrontDesk.log.
7. Make screen captures of all installed Excalibur devices: Open the Device Manager (Select Start | Settings |
Control Panel | System | Hardware | Device Manager). Click on the plus sign (+) to show all the Excalibur
devices installed.
• Press Alt+PrintScreen to capture the screen. Paste the screen capture into Microsoft Word or save as
a graphic in any graphics program. Double-click each Excalibur device to display its properties, and
take screen captures of each one.
• Now click on the Details tab. In the drop down box, select “Device Instance Id” or “Hardware Ids”.
Press Alt+PrintScreen to capture the screen. Paste the screen capture into Microsoft Word or save as
a graphic in any graphics program.
• These screen captures enable Technical Support to determine whether the hardware is set up
properly.
Excalibur cards are listed under a heading similar to Excalibur PCI Cards or Excalibur PCMCIA Cards.
Note that each Excalibur device should have a gray colored diamond shape next to it (Win XP and earlier). For
Win7/8/10, there is a display icon with perhaps a small question mark (?) next to the installed Excalibur card.
This is an acceptable phenomenon.
If any Excalibur device has a large yellow question mark (?) or exclamation mark (!), then the driver did not
install properly.
If there is a "PCI Device" marked with a yellow question mark (?) or exclamation mark (!), then you probably
need to reinstall the driver for the card.
8. What is the revision number of the hardware drivers ? From the Device Manager, for the Excalibur listed
devices, click on one of the cards listed, and click on the Driver tab. Then click on the button “Driver Details”.
For each file listed in this window, send us the version number of file as listed in the lower section of the
screen.
The hardware driver files are found at C:\Windows\System32 and C:\Windows\System32\drivers. The file
names are:
• For 64bit Windows: excx64.sys and frontdesk.dll
• For 32bit Windows: exc2000.sys and frontdesk.dll
• For Windows NT: excalbr.sys
• For Windows 9x/ME: excalbr.vxd
Press Alt-ENTER (or right click, Properties | Version) to display the properties screen, select the Version or
Details tab to extract the version information, and add this to the email you send us.
9. Run the Showhex Memory Display utility. Select "Start | Programs | Excalibur | Showhex Memory Display
Utility". [ The current revision of Showhex is available for download from www.mil-1553.com/applications . ]
Select the device number as assigned in ExcConfig, and a module number. Then, select (a) "File | Save All
Modules to File" or (b) "File | Save to File". If (b), then do this for each module on the card (for 4000PCI card,
also do this for module 4, global register bank). Email us these files.
The Showhex files are good for the case where the card does not work, and also for the case where the card
works but has problems. It gives us a picture of the memory on the card and the messages as they were set
up by the user.
Note that the memory on all of our card/modules is NVRAM. This means that when you turn the machine off,
all the data that was in memory is erased. When the machine is turned on, the card/module performs a
reset, also wiping the memory clean. A Showhex dump run immediately after power on is also helpful, to
show if the card is alive at that point.
10. For Exalt problems, note the Exalt version number; send the .pak (package) file, the .rpf (replay) file, and
the .scn (scenario) files (if there are any in use).
11. Please send a sketch of the system – computers, cabling/wiring, couplers, Excalibur cards, etc.
If your system is 1553 protocol communications, please see our “1553 Bus Connections diagram.pdf”
document on our Help Desk webpage at URL www.mil-1553.com/help-desk.