Thanks re. BMI/cable Receiver "Normal Operation"

["Carroll Slemaker" <cslemaker1@xxxxxxxx>]

Thanks to all who helpfully responded on this issue.  It appears that the
boot-time problem is well known and is primarily a Windows problem - Windows
thinks the BMI COM port is a mouse.  There must, however, be some
contributing factor within the BMI box also because I never had such a
problem with my Signal/cable box.  In any event, since I now know the cause,
it's a minor issue.

It seems that several people misunderstood the "lockup" problem.  It is not
a situation where TS, after initiation, is waiting for a date from the box.
Under that situation the Omega server reports exactly that - that it is
"waiting for a valid date".

Neither is it a case of the box losing its lock on the channel and
continually rescanning for a valid channel.  The screen on the box shows
that it is still locked on the proper channel, band, and line.  Also, these
items are displayed in upper-case showing that the box thinks that
everything is OK.

And, finally, it is not a case of the box simply seeming to do nothing
because it is a weekend and nothing is happening in the markets.

Instead, the situation is that the Omega server cannot establish
communication with the BMI box and it tries to do so endlessly, looping
through all the baud rates over and over.

Incidentally, I now have one full day of data collected from BMI and I
consider the switch from Signal to have been an outstanding success!  If I
recall correctly, I lost about 4 ticks (S&P Sep contract) and there was one
bad tick.  And this was communicating at 19.2K.  After the market close we
reconfigured my box to 38.4K.  I'll have more to report on BMI/cable after
I've used it a while.

Best regards,
Carroll Slemaker