PG3 and PG4 have been replaced by PG5 years ago, but are still used quite often. What is the situation regarding technical support?

PG3 and PG4 are no longer supported. As long as you don't need our assistance, you are free to still use them, but as soon you need support, we will only help you if you update to PG5 and convert the project. Of course we guide you trough the conversion if necessary. Until now all PG3 projects could be converted to PG5, depending on the programming style some adaptions may be necessary.

PG3 is a software that is running on the OS (Operating System) DOS. It isn't compatible with newer Windows products such as W2k or XP. This is mainly because of the different communcation port interface of the Windows OS family (32 bit OS) compared to the serial communication interface of DOS.

Since the Windos OS (Windows95, Windows98, Windows Millenium, Windows 2000, Windows XP) do handle the interface to the COM ports in a different that DOS does, the communication between the PC and PCD isn't guaranteed.
Unfortunately the Command Prompt ("DOS Window") of Windows OS is no workaround. The serial port is still handled by Windows, also if the program that accesses it is called in the Command Prompt.

Unless you want to install DOS on your PC, you need updating your programming tool for the PCD Classic controllers to PG5 (link for downloading the demonstration version below).

PG3 and PG4 have been replaced by PG5 years ago, but are still used quite often. What is the situation regarding technical support?

PG3 and PG4 are no longer supported. As long as you don't need our assistance, you are free to still use them, but as soon you need support, we will only help you if you update to PG5 and convert the project. Of course we guide you trough the conversion if necessary. Until now all PG3 projects could be converted to PG5, depending on the programming style some adaptions may be necessary.

PG4 is not guaranteed to work on the latest operating systems, we recommend to update to PG5. PG4 projects can be imported in PG5 easily.

It may occur that a build fails because of a "dynamic space overflow for type ...". This message is created by PG5 due to a too small range of ressources that PG5 can distribute dynamically.

To increase the amount of ressources open the Software Settings Window (or double click on the red error message in the message window of PG5 Project manager) and select the concerned tab. A dynamic space overflow can occur for all media types like registers, flags, timers, counters etc.

Now increase the dynamic space by editing a smaller number as first address for Registers, Flags, Counters, Texts or DB's.
In case you run into a dynamic space overflow for Timers you have to increase the last timer in both fields, the "Last Timer" and "Dynamic Space, Timers, Last Address".

Example such an error message:

Fatal Error 368: Auto-allocation/dynamic space overflow for type: R