ORCA FAQs
I just updated to 10.8 and now entering numbers greater than 1000 is broken?
Apple changed the system wide behavior of number formatting as of 10.8. See this note for how to fix it.
I just updated to 10.9 and now strings in ORCAScript are broken?
Apple changed the system wide behavior of string quotes. See this note for that problem.
ORCA was working fine until I changed my hardware, now I get access errors. What can I do?
Access errors are almost always caused by one of two reasons:
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1)You are using the wrong base address for the card. Double check the card’s dip switches and make sure you have the correct address set in ORCA.
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2)A card is not seated properly in the electronic crate. This can lead to very strange behavior. Firmly, but carefully, make sure all cards are fully seated.
Why do I get build and link errors associated with NI objects?
You need to install the National Instruments drivers before building ORCA for the first time. When this driver package is not installed several interface files will be missing. You can find the drivers in the Drivers folder of the distribution.
This question should now be obsolete. Due to legal concerns we do not make available the National Instruments drivers. ORCA will now build just fine without you having the NI driver, but the ENet/100 will not work. If you require that object, you must contact National Instruments to obtain the driver.
Why does ORCA crash when I try to use a 617 or 620 PCI card?
You need to install the drivers. This is a bug in ORCA which is caused by not trapping certain hardware related exceptions. It will be fixed in some future version of ORCA. For now, you have to install a PCI driver for the card you are trying to use. You can find the drivers in the Drivers folder of the distribution. Update: ORCA should now report that it can not find a driver rather than crashing.
I just downloaded the newest version of ORCA and it won't build. Why not?
Check that you really have the latest version of the project and all of the new files.
Sometimes when we add new files, we forget to check in the project.
I installed a new Bit 3 controller board and I'm getting VME exceptions during read/write operations. Why?
The jumpers on the board are incorrect. Here are the correct jumper settings.
I reverted to an older version of a couple of files and now CVS won't work right with them.
CVS views revisions as snapshots in history and won't allow changes. The same thing happens when the entire project is reverted. You have to remove the sticky tag for those files. Note: the ORCA repository is now under subversion. This question is now obsolete.
How do I report bugs?
Send bug reports to Tom Caldwell. Please include as much information as possible. especially if there was a crash. For crashes the information that is important include things like:
What is the Orca version?
What is the OS version? We are definitely moving into using Cocoa additions from 10.4 and up. If you are running 10.3 or lower, there will be some things that don't work.
Exactly what actions led up to the crash? In a run or not, etc.?
What objects are in the configuration? Maybe include the configuration file in the report.
If it is reproducible, try running in the debugger and take a snapshot of the stack dump if possible.
Starting with version 2.6.x ORCA can automatically send the crash logs to us. If you are having problems, please enable this feature.