PC broke?

[bitbaltic]

I have virtually the same setup as you as we have discovered. The same exact fault happened to me about 6 weeks ago. Eventually I gave up and bought a replacement PC but not like for like. I went for an Acer Aspire Cloudbook due to the battery life (at least 8 hours). It's bigger of course and not 12volts but I only use it for planning and not underway. It took me ages to get a refund from the supplier of the sumvision which was still under warranty. I succeeded though far a while.

That's interesting to hear Clive. Was it a sudden failure as I experienced?

Also had you installed the Eltima software on it and were you able to recover the licence?

 

[cliveshelton]

Yes. A sudden failure with coloured lines on the monitor for a second or so with black screen thereafter.
I had the port splitter installed and working but have not managed to get it going again on the new PC. I might try a hard wired solution instead at a later date. It's not that vital to me to see navmon & plotter at the same time. Perhaps I should enquire about it to eltima to preserve my investment in their software.

 

[rogerthebodger]

Yes. A sudden failure with coloured lines on the monitor for a second or so with black screen thereafter.
I had the port splitter installed and working but have not managed to get it going again on the new PC. I might try a hard wired solution instead at a later date. It's not that vital to me to see navmon & plotter at the same time. Perhaps I should enquire about it to eltima to preserve my investment in their software.

Interesting comment about your port splitter (VGA port I assume). I had the same problem with a passive video splitter and changed to an active splitter and all worked. I also have a VGA to Video converter that would not work directly but connected after my active video splitter and it worked OK again.

 

[bitbaltic]

Interesting comment about your port splitter (VGA port I assume). I had the same problem with a passive video splitter and changed to an active splitter and all worked. I also have a VGA to Video converter that would not work directly but connected after my active video splitter and it worked OK again.

No, we are talking about a software serial port splitter, which distributes NMEA from a single physical to multiple virtual ports. It's needed to do this with the PC Plotter software, which will not listen to the ports created by NavMonPC.

http://www.eltima.com/products/serialsplitter/

 

[bitbaltic]

Yes. A sudden failure with coloured lines on the monitor for a second or so with black screen thereafter.
I had the port splitter installed and working but have not managed to get it going again on the new PC. I might try a hard wired solution instead at a later date. It's not that vital to me to see navmon & plotter at the same time. Perhaps I should enquire about it to eltima to preserve my investment in their software.

I have been going through software vendors today to try and get licenses released so I can reassign to the replacement PC. I contacted Eltima via their help form and have not heard. I will report back.

A couple of points of note:

1) Gavin Ashworth at PC Plotter was his usual helpful self and released the licence from the old PC straight away after a phone call;

2) it was my understanding that the Navionics Ntag file which administers the licensing on the Navionics+ micro-SD card would only allow the charts to be used on five devices total (PCs and chart plotters). Navionics, however, tell me there are NO restrictions on the number of devices on which the charts can be used, so I can upload them to the new PC without fear of running out of licenses. We'll see!

 

[bitbaltic]

I contacted Eltima via their help form and have not heard. I will report back.

A final note on this just for future reference. I installed the Eltima software on the new mini-PC today and although it claims to be 'single license' the new installation accepted the original product key no problem so in practice multiple installs are probably possible. I never did hear back from ELtima support.

Navionics also reinstalled without issue.

The replacement PC is up and running now and waiting to go to the boat tomorrow. I have googled to see if juvenile VGA failure is a known issue with the sumvision and nothing comes up, so perhaps Clive and I were just unlucky.