How to Get Support - ASCOM Platform

To be written, random bits added below. Maybe not the right sort of things.

The ASCOM Platform installer is asking for the Microsoft .NET Framework. There are so many versions out there. Is 4.x "better" than 3.x? What should I do?

There has been confusion about getting the Microsoft .NET Framework installed. It is a pre-requisite to the ASCOM Platform. Please read the prerequisite note for Windows 10 & 7. Windows XP is no longer officially supported for the ASCOM Platform.

I can't get the ASCOM Platform to install. It is giving error messages.

Anti-virus tools keep getting more aggressive, and we can't anticipate what may come along in the future. The best way to get help with a failed Platform installation is to (a) Create a zip file containt the entire contents of the [My ]Documents\ASCOM folder on your computer. Right click - Send to... -> Compressed (zipped) folder. Then (2) Post a note to the ASCOM Help forum requesting help and attach the zipped log files to that message. These incidents are becoming rare (mid 2023) as most pieces are digitally signed and also submitted to the anti-malware companies fdor includion in their databases.

The driver installer shows the message “The ASCOM Platform 5 is required for this driver”

This is resolved for most drivers, see Platform 5.5 only installers for information on how to fix this for your driver.

How do I enable and disable serial tracing?

Most drivers use the ASCOM "Helper" component to do serial port I/O. For those drivers that do, you can capture a trace of the serial traffic to and from the device by using serial tracing.The standard ASCOM Chooser has a Trace menu. Use this to set the location of the serial trace log and to turn tracing on and off.

The ASCOM Diagnostics program gives me the error "Incompatible Driver xxxxx. This 32 bit only driver won't work in a 64 bit application even though it is correctly registered as a 32bit COM driver. Please contact the driver author and request an updated driver." Does this mean that the application I want to use will not work with this driver?

This will almost certainly not matter. Many astronomy applications are compiled as 32 bits and will work with 32 bit only drivers, even on 64 bit versions of Windows. You are seeing this because the ASCOM diagnostics program is doing a full check and is reporting this to help driver developers know of this potential problem. If you see the same error when you try to choose the driver in the Application then this is a problem because the application is running as 64 bits and a 32 bit application will not work. Note: This is not under the control of the ASCOM Platform. We do not have the ability to compensate for this fundamental differences between 32 and 64 bit systems.

Why don't my scripts work on a 64-bit system?

Most ASCOM drivers and the ASCOM support components are 32-bit. If you run your script by double-clicking it or using cscript on the command line, it uses the 64-bit script engine. The 64-bit script engine cannot use 32-bit components. On a 64-bit system, you must use the 32-bit script engine for ASCOM scripts. The easiest way is to use a command shell like this:

  c:\whatever\> %windir%\SYSWOW64\cscript.exe myscript.vbs (or myscript.js for JScript);