Why do some of the settings for my DFNT solution show different values in the Diagnostic Menus than the values I downloaded in my DFNT.CFG file?

If you see different values displayed in the Diagnostic menus than what are in your DFNT.CFG file in the [DF1 Pass-Through Port] or [DF1 Pass-Through Server Port 1] sections, it could be due to the Pass-Through Server or Pass-Through Port being disabled. This is caused by a quirk in the module's internal loader program that reads the configution file on boot-up and sets the module's configuration parameters accordingly.

When module is booting up, the firmware begins scanning the contents of the DFNT.CFG file that was downloaded through HyperTerminal and stored on a Compact Flash card in the module (or, with some DFNT solutions, FLASH RAM.) As the loader scans this file, if it sees the first parameter, the ENABLE parameter, of each of these Pass-Through sections set to "No", then it knows this feature will not be used, leaves the default values in the module's operating RAM memory, does not bring in the values from the file, and skips to the next section of the DFNT.CFG file.

If either or both sections are ENABLED, that is, they have the ENABLED parameter set to "Yes", then the loader will read the values from the DFNT.CFG file, transfer them to the module's operating RAM, and then those values will be displayed in the Diagnostic menus instead of the default values.

Some other common causes of configuration values not being picked up correctly by the loader firmware are related to corrupted copies of the DFNT.CFG text files or, sometimes, failures of the Compact Flash Cards or FLASH RAM. If a DFNT.CFG text file ends up with certain non-printing ASCII codes, like 00hex Null bytes, tabs, or other control-type characters because the file was edited in a word processor program rather than a text editor, like Windows Notepad, that can also cause one or more configuration values to be read and displayed incorrectly in the Diagnostic menus.