Yes. The Access Port is simply an easy common point for seperate compononents so you only need to run one length of cable to your wall panel.

The attached document will show which strands of the CAT5 cable are used for which purpose. Its simply then a matter of running a pair to each device.

Yes. The relay switch information is carried through the ribbon cable supplied with a Multi Media Port. When not using a Multi Media Port product, it is still possible to control a single relay using the same terminal that the ribbon cable usually plugs into.

Simply use the first and last pair of pins as demonstrated in the attached diagram.

Yes version 3.33.2 onwards will work under windows XP. There are a few things to watch:

1. When maximised and when run under XP or Win2k, the sidebar text on the scheduling window sometimes doesn't redraw when the screen is scrolled in the time axis. Workaround: Normalise the window and drag it out to full size. The same issue exists BTW with 16 bit versions of Excel.

2. With XP SP2, the serial port drivers got changed and are broken as far as we are concerned. To see if this affects you, test as follows:

Run VC3 with communication working, i.e. turn on the serial port. It will probably work OK.
Shut VC3 down and re-start it. If it crashes, you have the serial port issue.
If you try to recreate this on any machine in our office you will not find a problem - see below for why.

How to fix it, so that it survives a future Windows Update:

Download and install the Novell Client for XP, a free download from www.novell.com. This will work even if you don't have a Novell network.
Why it works - Novell installs a different driver to support capture and redirection of ports, e.g. for remote printing.

3. File locations and folders when migrating VC3 from an older PC without using the original installation program:

Copy:

C:\VC3 folder and contents
C:\IDAPI and contents
C:\PDOXUSRS.NET (in the root directory)
VC3.INI in the Windows directory - not absolutely essential, VC3 will re-create it, but it may have custom changes in it.
If the user wants a "clean" start (i.e. isn't worried about existing bookings) you should delete \VC3\VCBOOK.*, which is the bookings (i.e. transactions) database. It can get quite large after several years and if not purged will slow down the system. Deleting it annually is recommended. ASK THE CLIENT FIRST as otherwise you may delete future bookings.

If you are deleting rooms or sources from the system, you should also delete VCBOOK.* because the items you are removing may be referenced in the database. VC3 doesn't like it when this happens. It will cope with a certain number of unreferenced items by deleting the offending records but if there are too many it will crash, usually with a corrupted database.

As far as I know VC3 hasn't been tried with Vista but I can see a potential problem in that it needs to write a file in the root of the drive, which would mean you'd need to run it with admin rights.