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Hello together,
I have a problem with my dongle. I have new PC and there is no printer port any more, so I can't put in the sentinel. So I used an USB to parallel cable to insert our dongle, after that I installed the Sentinel Protection Installer V7 and executed the program. After that I also got the same error message as before. When I configure the sentinel about SetupSysDriver.exe, I have no chance to configure it, because there were two options ISA and USB and no change has influence on the error in µVision. So does anyone has an idea to solve the problem?
Thanks
Thommy
"For a laptop, you may be able to find a PC-Card or ExpressCard supporting a printer port. For a PC, you should look into adding a PCI printer card."
Even if you do manage to find such hardware, you may still have issues finding appropriate drivers.
Much better, I think, to just get on to Keil to properly resolve the licence issue..
"...giving a lot of grief."
Oh yes!
Note that you can find such boards that does not need any special driver because they implement a standard PCI-connected printer port.
The built-in peripherials of a PC are either connected to PCI (or PCI-E) or on a PCI-to-ISA bridge.
PCMCIA was a laptop-format version of the original ISA bus, while Cardbus is basically PCI.
But you are correct - it is possible to implement the board/card in a way that you will need separate drivers.
I was thinking more of the driver for the dongle - rather than the card itself.
This whole dongle business was built for Win-NT (or earlier?); there were driver issues with getting it to work even on XP - so I'd hate to think what it's going to be like on a new computer with Vista or Win-7...
Yes, dongles are evul. And LPT dongles are the worst of the worst, since they are relying on ancient hardware. Printers just are not built for LPT use anymore, so computers are not built with printer ports.
Quite frankly, any type of copy protection will guarantee large costs for the buyer by reducing their ability to use the license they have payed for. And if the company who made the program closes operation, the license may suddenly be totally unusable. The machine it runs on may die. The hw lock may die. The OS may get an update that is incompatible.
"LPT dongles are the worst of the worst, since they are relying on ancient hardware"
Not only are they relying on ancient hardware, they are also relying on using it to a purpose for which it was never designed - which is why the USB-to-LPT adaptors are useless here.
Back in the Triscend days, their JTAG adaptor (among others) also used the LPT port. Although the Keil dongle was supposed to provide a pass-though for other devices on the LPT pot, it didn't work - and we had to come to a "special arrangement" with Keil to be able to debug Triscend!
"Quite frankly, any type of copy protection will guarantee large costs for the buyer by reducing their ability to use the license they have payed for"
Indeed - and often it's more cost to the bona fide user than to the hacker!
But software "node-locking" and "licence manager" solutions are no better - they cause just as much grief as hardware dongles.
In fact, I would prefer a hardware key - it makes it really simple to just install the software on every PC, and only allow the appropriate number of concurrent uses.