Well as I started to get my locomotives and decoders together, all of a sudden neither the Digitrax Programmer or the ESU programmer would work because of this: Not sure what happened, I have made no changes to my system Maybe it is time to drop Windows and move to a Mac.......
Do you have automatic updates turned on by any chance? Also I presume you have rebooted your system and gotten the same error? If you are going to change your operating system, you might consider Linux, you can run it on the hardware you already have.
In the words of my old friend, an IBM programmer, personal computers are NOT computers. They are entertainment devices. There are so many bugs involved, it's surprising they even work at all. Doug
My next personal computer will not be Intel Architecture (or AMD), but ARM. Much better processor architecture, with more leg to run. RISC-V may eventually overtake ARM, but not for quite a while yet. Intel Architecture is a CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) requiring a very long execution pipeline for performance. When a conditional branch instruction is miss-predicted as to whether the branch would be taken or not, the long instruction pipeline (and a chunk of cache) must be flushed and refilled, slowing performance for longer. So Intel dedicates a tremendous amount of logic to try to predict whether a branch will be taken or not. That's chip space that could be used for accelerating instruction execution, expanding cache space, or omitted to save power and cost. That amount of prediction logic is not as critical with a smaller, simpler Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) like ARM or RISC-V. Thus they can dedicate more on-chip logic directly to instruction execution, cache size, or not and save power/cost.
Which version Java do you use David ? You probably already did this , uninstall java and install a new version . And it I'm not mistaken there was a recent thread in the JMRI IO Group about this . Mike
I failed to mention why ARM and other Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) architectures have shorter pipelines. They have simpler instructions, which do not require long pipelines to execute at high performance (clock rates). The shorter pipelines do not take as long to refill after a miss-predicted jump/branch instruction, so the performance penalty for mis-predicting the next instruction to be executed is less.
I understand about RISC systems, they are what I use at work all the time, but I am not too worried about having one at home. My personal laptop is a few years past it's expiration date. It is about 10 to 12 years old. I actually got a Mac Book Pro to replace it. Now I just have to figure out how to use the Mac.
Apple is an attractive ARM laptop option, but their draconian "security" bias toward Apple-store-provided applications is a bit too self-serving for me: "in Catalina and above, the normal Downloads and Documents folders are protected against access by non-app store programs like XTrackCAD" (from the install instructions for XTrackCAD on Apple computers. The XTrackCAD developers provide the work-arounds for installing it, but the restrictions on file access remain.) Note that XTrackCAD is not yet compatible/supported for Windows on ARM either, but there are some work-arounds that can get you there.
Support for Java is declining everywhere. I had this issue as well and had to install the Java SE Development Kit. Once that was installed all was good. But I gotta ask, how old is your computer and how much memory does it have? You will not notice the difference between an Intel or ARM processor unless you are running some serious software. If you're running a computer simulation of the movement of the cosmos over the next few million years, you may see a slight difference. But with the software you and I run at home it's not going to make any difference at all. If you like headaches, get the Mac. Twice the price and same performance as a PC (Apple will tell you different, but does it really matter if Photoshop renders your image in 10.55 seconds on the MAC or in 10.56 seconds on the PC?). But they do come with the bonus feature of constant issues when trying to run non Apple approved apps
There's a big difference in power consumption between ARM and Intel Architecture processors, in favor of ARM. Which allows a smaller battery, a smaller thermal management system, etc. that weigh less.
best bet these days is older puter running linux of some flavor. it allows you to run older puter with the power of newer puters. i have or had a very old lap top. installed mint on it and now its like a new machine. gave it to my grand kid . the learning curve from windows to linux is kinda rough but very doable.
The computer is on its last legs now. I use it for more than JRMI, so when I replace it, I will get a system with 64GB of RAM and not worry about Java Bloat. My current system is 16GB of Ram which was fine for many years, just not the new release of JRMI/Java
Well this is in my first foray into an Apple Mac, so it may be a while before I figure out how to use it for JRMI and managing the inventory. So far it has not been very easy, been using a PC since the first computer I purchased. That was a Compaq DeskPro 286 with the numeric co-processor8MB of RAM. Cost me a small fortune way back then, but then again, I really did not have much else to spend it on. It sure wore down the battery on the sailboat.
