Technical Notes, Zetafax

PRB: Brooktrout TR1034 and Trufax BRI boards fail to initialise correctly on Windows 2000 and 2003

ZTN1514

ID: ZTN1514

This Zetafax technical note applies to:

  • Zetafax server version 9.1 and later

Symptom

The Brooktrout devices fail to initialise when starting the Zetafax server on a Windows 2003 or Windows XP (SP2) machine with 4GB or more of RAM. The server reports error messages similar to the one below:

BTBINIT    - (E) - Module 2 exists, but the firmware could not be downloaded to it.

Cause

The problem is occurring because the communication between the board and host is timing out in the environment described above.  This is happening because the Physical Address Extension (PAE) on the operating system is enabled by default.  The version of boston.sys currently used by the Zetafax Server does not support this setup.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, you have the following options:

  1. Remove RAM from the server so that it runs with less than 4GB.
  2. Disable PAE on the system.  Please read the following Microsoft technical note for further information on how to do this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/260544/en-us

Status

This has been identified by Equisys as a problem with the software versions given above.

Last updated: 8th January 2009 (GR/EB/SV/MW)