24 replies to this topic

[rhamer]

I'm sorry Arbiter, but your last 2 posts are just wrong. To say that those 3 problems are not show stoppers, is unbelievable. Do you honestly expect me to continue to have to carefully navigate my mouse pointer around the VS GUI ensuring I don't cross over a killer variable that instantly shuts down VS. this then usually leads to an episode of failed deployment, where I have to be very careful what order I try to resolve it, because I get a BSOD. At the very best I'm rebooting and manually erasing my netduino, after I have removed it from its motherboard. If you think those problems are ok to live with, then you have a more understanding boss than me. As for the price point, what has that got to do with it? I didn't choose the netduino because it was cheap, I will happily pay more if the issues get fixed. I chose it because I believed Microsoft and others when they spruced it's capabilities. Added to this, v4.2 was in beta and now supported VB which was even better. Add Ethernet capability of the Plus and it was a no brainier. But all this was October last year, no way I thought it would take this long to get it to release quality, and we still have a long way to go. I really don't want to turn this into an argument, and it seems that I'm the only one complaining, so I think I'll just have to give up. Chris, I appreciate your efforts, but a year in beta is just going to be too much, and I don't get the positive feeling that Microsoft are devoting any real effort to fixing the issues. I think I will still be in the same position in 6 months time, wishing I had moved on months earlier. I really wanted to use the worlds best IDE for my embedded needs, but it's back to my own hardware and compiler. Regards Rohan

[Chris Walker]

Hi Rohan,

At the very best I'm rebooting and manually erasing my netduino, after I have removed it from its motherboard.

Wow, that's a pretty extreme process you're needing to go through. I've seen some BSOD's with the NETMF drivers in the 4.2 beta, but never the need to physically remove the mainboard and erase it to get Visual Studio to work again. I didn't realize that your setup was experiencing that strong of an experience with the NETMF 4.2 BSOD glitch. That really helps me understand your frustration!

I really wanted to use the worlds best IDE for my embedded needs, but it's back to my own hardware and compiler.

I think that's probably the best route. There are 10,000s of developers and board happily chugging along on NETMF 4.1, but for production use it's wise to steer clear of pre-release software (especially if you are experiencing issues during the testing phase). And as you noticed...with multiple parties contributing, you never really know how long it will take to come out of beta.

I really appreciate all your honesty and your feedback. Best of luck with your other compiler; if you have free time later this summer we'd love to hear if the new NETMF WinUSB drivers help solve the issues you were having. I understand if you don't have time to let us know, but if you do it would be great to know that the issue was solved in your case as well.

Chris

[Arbiter]

There's a bug in that sample framework. Hold off and I'll post a rather more sophisticated update that can also watchdog loops that have private timers.

[Jack Chidley]

Rohan, you are not alone. These issues strike me as systemic. I get the same issues with the Netduino GO: that also runs 4.2. The BSOD is, probably, a driver issue. The other problems (the lock up) must be related to 4.2 somehow. Have you tried using 4.1? Surely that would be less painful that either continuing with 4.2 or abandoning the whole effort? Jack

[Arbiter]

Two minutes with google produced a VSIX that disables the QuickInfo data tips.

I hope this helps.

I'm truly not having anything like the grief you report. For me, deployment hassles went away when I realised you have to let the N+ have regular idle time if you want reliable and quick deployment, and I've never seen the crashing datatip problem on my system.

Perhaps your system is crufty in some way; professional devstations often are. For the record, my stable system is an i5 2500K with 8G RAM, a 120G SSD and twin 500G HDDs striped as a 1T drive. The software stack is Win7 Ultimate 64 with VS 2010 Pro.

Very little has been added to VS; basically I just followed the directions on this site to prep for Netduino development, and after that a few more bits and pieces for 4.2

I did get abrupt reboots from interrupting failed deployments, but as I said there are straightforward ways to prevent deployment problems. I haven't had a deployment failure in weeks, so the reboot thing doesn't happen to me. It is quite plausible that I haven't seen the datatip problem because my mouse cursor is normally either over the output/locals panes or on the other screen.