| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| sem |
Posted - Apr 23 2003 : 10:38:30 AM
I have a some questions regarding Presentation on the XP computer (on the 1.5T scanner).
First, every time Presentation is launched, it prompts for license activation. I feel like this could be fixed if someone with administrator privledges activated the license (it just seems to not be writing to disk the license activation number).
Second, there seem to be some problems with the response box. Whenever I tried to test the device (I used the "gameport device"), I received a Windows error message stating that Presentation was going to unexpectedly close. However, Presentation never actually crashed, but the response box testing never worked, either. We pressed buttons on the response box, but Presentation never reponded (as it should in testing mode). I tried testing the response box (in Presentation) in the same way on Donders, and everything worked fine.
Finally, as I understand it, there is currently no way to trigger Presentation to start an experiment from MRI pulses on the 1.5T (as is done with CIGAL), even though Presentation itself has this functionality in "fMRI mode." Is this correct?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Sara Moore |
| 12 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| sem |
Posted - Aug 26 2003 : 11:27:05 AM
Has anyone successfully tested the scanner trigger in Presentation on the 1.5T?
Thanks,
Sara Moore |
| jim.voyvodic |
Posted - Jul 01 2003 : 9:22:03 PM
The button box is currently connected to Donders as a gameport device and the same box is connected on Mach via the A/D board (it can't be a gameport device simultaneously on 2 computers). We are waiting for a new response box to arrive any day (early next week?); it will be connected to Mach as a gameport device as soon as it arrives.
My understanding was that all of software still runs on Donders so that if anyone who needs the response box can keep running on that computer for a few more days we will be able to make a smooth transition to a fully functional XP system very soon. If there are users who cannot run on Donders now please let me know.
Jim |
| francis.favorini |
Posted - Jul 01 2003 : 6:08:20 PM
Folks,
The authors of Presentation have set it up to prompt every user to activate the license. In theory, this is to work around another problem, but I am not conviced of their logic. In any case, I have developed a work-around that should now prevent us from getting prompted to activate the license.
Let me know if you are still getting prompted.
-Francis
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| weissman |
Posted - Jul 01 2003 : 2:24:44 PM
Hi Francis,
Thanks for looking into the Presentation licesing issue on Mach. If you or anyone else has updated information on how to get the button box to work when using Presentation on Mach, that would also be useful since right now I can only get responses when I run on Donders.
Thanks again,
Daniel |
| francis.favorini |
Posted - Jun 30 2003 : 6:40:37 PM
Presentation was installed as administrator. It still persists in prompting every user to register it. Not sure yet if this is a feature or a bug. I will look into it soon.
-Francis
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| weissman |
Posted - Jun 30 2003 : 5:48:34 PM
Dear Forum_ers,
On April 23rd, I saw a post indicating that there were problems with the button box on Mach.
Today, I noticed that these problems are still present. For some reason, I cannot get the Presentation Software on MACH to recognize the gameport device.
In addition, the Presentation Program is asking me to go to the Presentation website to install a temporary license when I open the program. I believe that if someone with administrator priveledges installs Presentation on MACH, then it will be unnecessary to go through this procedure each time I log in (based on a similar experience we had at the CCN).
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!
Daniel
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| tonev |
Posted - May 08 2003 : 2:01:34 PM
2 Questions about Presentation:
1) Has this licensing issue been resolved on all machines that use the program? I am specifically referring to the computer for the mock scanner.
2) I noticed that at the Presentation website, users will be required to pay to use the program starting in 2004. Is there a move at BIAC to purchase a license (or licenses) for the software?
Thanks,
Simon |
| sem |
Posted - May 08 2003 : 10:47:41 AM
Our Presentation experiment is ready to go, but we'd rather not load it onto Donders if at all possible. I noticed that the Presentation licensing issue has been fixed on Mach, but the response box still seems to be having problems, and I can't tell if the scanner cable has been hooked up. Does anyone have any updates on the status of Presentation on Mach? I would be more than willing to help test it when things are ready to go on the hardware end.
Thanks,
Sara Moore |
| sem |
Posted - Apr 24 2003 : 12:56:01 PM
Jim,
That's also what I'm getting from the documentation. I will look over a little more of the hardware documentation, and I can certainly come over and try to help when the cable is ready.
Thanks,
Sara |
| jim.voyvodic |
Posted - Apr 24 2003 : 12:50:38 PM
Sara,
Thanks for the reference. What I understand from all of this that Presentation wants to see a trigger signal on Pin 10 of the parallel port. Does that seem right to you? We can set up a cable to test that. Could you come over and try it out when the cable is ready? Or find someone else to? Your message raises all sorts of triggering and parallel port issues that I don't understand, so it seems someone that uses Presentation will be needed to make sense of this.
thanks, Jim |
| sem |
Posted - Apr 24 2003 : 12:36:01 PM
Thanks for your help. Here is some documentation from Presentation's website
(http://nbs.neuro-bs.com/presentation/docs) on hardware interfacing for fMRI pulses.
Thanks,
Sara
fMRI Mode Interfacing
During scenarios of type fMRI, Presentation can monitor and trigger stimuli sequences from pulses coming from external devices such as MRI scanners. Details of FMRI mode scenarios are given in the fMRI Mode section. This section discussing hardware connection issues.
Note that although fMRI mode input uses the parallel port, the fMRI mode feature is distinct from Presentation's other parallel port features. In particular, when setting up fMRI mode port input, only settings in the "fMRI Mode Port Input" box on the "Hardware Settings" tab are set; you should not add a parallel port in the "Port Input" box of the "Hardware Settings" tab.
The "Parallel Port Address" edit box allows you to specify the memory mapped address of the parallel port to use. The sole preset is "0x378" which is the standard address for LPT1. You will generally never have to change this. However, if you are using a second parallel port, or in the odd event that LPT1 is mapped to a different address, you can enter a different address in the edit box. Numbers starting with "0x" (Zero - x) are interpreted as hexadecimal numbers. You may also type a normal decimal number. If you wish to check the address of your ports, you may right click on the "My Computer" icon on your desktop, go to the "Properties" screen and inspect the "Device Manager" tab.
Interrupt Mode
You may use parallel port hardware interrupts to monitor pulses from the external device. This is recommended because you will not miss any pulses, even those with very short durations, and the timing accuracy will be better.
When using interrupt mode, the external signal should be connected to pin 10 of the parallel port you are using. You should determine whether your parallel port generates an interrupt on a rising or falling voltage. It most probably will generate an interrupt when the voltage rises, but you should test this on the fMRI Mode Test Window. You should also know what kind of pulse is sent from your external device. It's possible for your MRI scanner to send "inverted" pulses, meaning that normally the voltage is high and goes to ground during the pulse. You should make sure that interrupts are generated at the start of the pulses. For example, if interrupts are generated on rising voltage, but the pulses are inverted, you will get interrupts at the end of the pulse instead of the beginning. If your pulses are very short, this may not make much difference. However, if the pulses were 100ms for example, Presentation would be notified 100ms late. To correct this, you may need to produce a circuit that will invert the pulses.
To use interrupt mode, check the "Use Interrupts" box. On Windows 9x, you must specify the interrupt request line used by the parallel port in the "IRQ" box. LPT1 most often uses 7. You can look up the value on the Windows hardware properties window. On Windows 2000/XP, you specify the port number instead.
If you are using Windows 2000 or XP, you will most likely have to adjust the Windows LPT settings. If this is the case, an error message will indicate this. To enable the parallel port interrupts, right-click on the "My Computer" icon and choose "manage". Then locate the relevant LPT entry in the "Device Manager". On the "Port Settings" tab of the properties window for the port, you should be able to choose the "Use any interrupt assigned to the port" option.
Polled Mode
If you can't use interrupts, you can have Presentation poll the parallel port to detect the pulses. In this case, the external signal should be connected to pin 12 of the parallel port you are using.
If your external device transmits inverted pulses, meaning that the pulse itself has 0 voltage and the remainder of the time the voltage is high, check the "Invert Pulse" check box. If your external device sends inverted pulses, but you do not check this box, the program may still trigger from these pulses. However, in this case the program will actually trigger from the end of the pulse - the space in between the inverted pulses will be interpreted as a very long pulse. Therefore, if you don't know what your external device is doing, you may inadvertently be introducing a fixed delay into your timing which depends on the width of your pulses. You can investigate this with the fMRI Mode Test Window.
Timing
When using hardware interrupts, Presentation relies on the low latency of virtual device driver interrupt handlers to obtain accurate timing information. For these events, Presentation does not compute an uncertainty (see Uncertainties) as for other events. In the logfile the uncertainty for interrupt driven events is given as "NA", which stands for "not applicable". This tells you that hardware interrupts were used to obtain the time of occurance.
For polled events, the Presentation event (see Uncertainties) can be identified with the rising edge of the input pulse. |
| jim.voyvodic |
Posted - Apr 24 2003 : 12:14:01 PM
1) The licensing issue has been passed on to Administrators to try to solve.
2) The response box will need to be rewired in order to make it work for Presentation on 2 computers at once (Donders and Mach). This shouldn't take too long (couple of days).
3) To trigger off the scanner Presentation would need to be told what hardware device the scanner signal is connected to. It is currently connected to a National Instruments analog/digital converter board. If somebody could tell me what input devices Presentation supports I'm sure we could find a configuration that would work. I will need help on this from a Presentation user though, both to get it set up and to figure out how to inform other Presentation users how to use this feature.
I apologize for not having Presentation completely ready to go on the new XP system. We had tested that it runs, but as I do not understand Presentation very well I have been relying on Presentation users to help identify issues in really using it on Windows XP. This Forum feedback is very useful, therefore, and we will try to resolve these issues as they come up. In the meantime, I encourage you to try Presentation on XP, but keep using the Windows 98 version if your paradigms don't yet run as you expect them to (and sending any new issues to the Forum as you find them).
thanks,
Jim |
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