Field Notes
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Tonzi: 2001-05-17 09:00:00 (DOY 137)
Author: Ted Hehn
Others:
Summary: 6 days of data lost after computer trouble, new procedure implemented for data retrieval.
| On Thursday 17May I arrived at the Tonzi tower and found the flux computer had crashed (error writing to drive c) - we lost 6 days of data beginning on 11May right after Liukang downloaded all data from that system. It appears that initiating communications with the USB port with IOMEGA software for transferring data to the Zip disk is causing some kind of fatal change in the computers operation. I do not know if it is the IOMEGA software that is the primary cause (I doubt it) but I suspect that Windows 98 is not fully USB compliant. Consequently, I modified the Windows 98 system configuration files and the batch files in a manner that does not allow Windows 98 to boot up upon powering up the computer. Rather the computer boots into MSDOS, changes over into the Tonzi directory and immediately executes the GILLSONIC program in MSDOS. For data downloads one must stop the program by pressing "Alt x" - upon which the program halts and the command prompt is displayed in the upper left hand corner. The remnant of the GILLSONIC program graphics are still displayed on the screen so don't be fooled into thinking that the PC has crashed. One must then change from the Tonzi directory to the "Windows" directory and then type "WIN" to boot up windows 98. Data can then be downloaded in the windows environment. After the download one must then restart the computer using the start button procedure and the pc will restart and auto-initiate the GILLSONIC program in the MSDOS environment. This "fix" corrects the symptom but does nothing to correct the disease that this computer seems to have developed. I foresee that our other flux computers will sooner or later develop similar problems due to Windows 98. My attempts to install Windows 95 on the Laptops have not been successful to date so I intend to wipe the hard drive clean on the spare laptop I have and then install an MSDOS CD driver and then install Windows 95 on the laptop. In theory this should put a stop to the problem at hand. However, to ensure consistent data capture we need to develop a method to power off and then power on the flux computers each day at midnight. This is a relatively simple matter except that the gateway computer's on/off switch is software driven and cannot be electro-mechanically modified to for this purpose. I have disassembled one and tried this and it doesn't work. The gateway laptops were designed for non-scientific purposes (word processing, net access, etc.....) and in my opinion will continue to be a perpetual problem. My suggestion at this time is that we contact an Applications Engineer at Dell and inform them of our particular application and discuss purchasing "one" new laptop pc specifically designed and built by Dell for our flux program. The design will be a bare bones configuration emphasizing scientific functionality for our specific application rather than the "PCs for dummies" approach that "off the shelf" laptops currently offer. This newly designed laptop should have a read/write CD or other storage device so that data is written there so that if we have a hard drive failure we will not lose data already collected. After testing the new laptop if we find that it works well for us we should purchase several others to replace the gateways. I will guarantee that this approach will solve the data loss problems we are currently experiencing. This should be done now during the early phases of design, installation and debugging our flux systems to yield the greatest possible benefit during the continuous data capture phase over the next 2-3 years. |
Field Data
No tank data
No TZ Well data found
No TZ Moisture Point data found
No VR Moisture Point data found
No TZ grass heigth found
No VR grass heigth found
No TZ Tree DBH found
No water potential data found
No TZ Grass Biomass data found
No TZ OakLeaves Biomass data found
No TZ PineNeedles Biomass data found
0 photos found
16 sets found
No data found for TZ_Fenergy.
No data found for TZ_tmet.
No data found for TZ_soilco2.
Can't check TZ_mixed
3 TZ_mixed graphs found
No data found for TZ_fflux.
8 TZ_fmet graphs found
No data found for TZ_tram.
No data found for TZ_co2prof.
No data found for TZ_irt.
No data found for TZ_windprof.
No data found for TZ_tflux.
2 TZ_sm graphs found
Can't check TZ_met
1 TZ_met graphs found
Can't check TZVR_mixed
No data found for TZ_osu.
No data found for TZ_fd.
Tonzi Z-cam data