Announce: CQC Version 1.3.5. Released

[Dean Roddey]

Charmed Quark Systems (www.charmedquark.com) is proud to announce the 1.3.5
release of CQC (the Charmed Quark Controller), its software based control
and automation system. CQC is the brains that supplement the brawn of your
PC network, to create a powerful, secure, network distributed, highly
visual, and highly robust system for management of hardware devices and
software applications. With the addition of the needed ports (IR, serial,
contact, etc...) to a general purpose PC, CQC can provide you with control
and automation services on par with far more expensive traditional
automation systems. Combined with its strong home theater front end
services, which make excellent use of the strengths of PC graphics, CQC is a
one stop shopping system that often requires the manual integration of three
or more packages in competing products. CQC supports the Windows XP, Windows
2000 and Windows Server family of operating systems, with others coming.

Here is the announcement thread on the Charmed Quark support forum if you
want more info:

http://www.charmedquark.com/www2/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=UBB1&Number=4091&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

If you just want to evaluate CQC and see what it can do and how it does it,
without having to first figure out how to connect it to your devices, then
you can just download it and install it and go through the 'Quick Tutorial'
which uses a device simulator to simulate a small set of devices. So don't
have to have any devices actually connected in order to do the whole
tutorial, though if you have an IRMan or USB-UIRT you can do one extra part
of the tutorial about IR receiving. But using the device simulator the
tutorial can take you through all of the major features of the system
without your having to figure out how to hoook it up to any of your devices
first. So it's pretty quick and simple to go through and get an
understanding of what CQC does and how. CQC has a 30 day trial period, so
you have plenty of time to evaluate it and see if it works for you.

On the web site, go to the Try/But menu item, then the Try It section. The
product download link is there, as well as the link to the Quick Tutorial
document.

If you want more high level info before actually diving in physically, in
the Documentation menu item, check the Oveview and Using CQC documents.

-------------------------------------
Dean Roddey
Chairman/CTO, Charmed Quark Systems
www.charmedquark.com

[Dean Roddey]

After the 1.3.5 release was out, it was discovered that a few people's
systems, for reasons not totally understood, would return incorrect host
names when doing reverse name resolution (converting from a numeric address
to a host name.) This would prevent all the CQC apps from finding each
other, because CQC was depending on reverse name resolution in a key place.

This dependence has been removed in a new 1.3.6 release, and that problem
should not show up anymore. Since we had to do a new release, we also took
the opportunity to fix a few small things that had been missed in the 1.3.5
release. And the device drivers that came out after 1.3.5, and were
therefore separately downloadable, were moved officially into the new
release.

If you are running 1.3.5, there is no immediate pressing need to upgrade to
1.3.6. But, it would be nice if you could do so at some point when it is
convenient for you, since it does have some more fixes and will insure that
if you should change your network configuration that, should you change your
network configuration in some way, that this name resolution problem will
not pop up for you.

------------------------------------
Dean Roddey
Chairman/CTO, Charmed Quark Systems
www.charmedquark.com

"Dean Roddey" <droddey@charmedquark.com> wrote in message
news:DdiDd.7823$yV1.4535@newssvr14.news.prodigy.co m...
> Charmed Quark Systems (www.charmedquark.com) is proud to announce the
> 1.3.5 release of CQC (the Charmed Quark Controller), its software based
> control and automation system. CQC is the brains that supplement the brawn
> of your PC network, to create a powerful, secure, network distributed,
> highly visual, and highly robust system for management of hardware devices
> and software applications. With the addition of the needed ports (IR,
> serial, contact, etc...) to a general purpose PC, CQC can provide you with
> control and automation services on par with far more expensive traditional
> automation systems. Combined with its strong home theater front end
> services, which make excellent use of the strengths of PC graphics, CQC is
> a one stop shopping system that often requires the manual integration of
> three or more packages in competing products. CQC supports the Windows XP,
> Windows 2000 and Windows Server family of operating systems, with others
> coming.
>
> Here is the announcement thread on the Charmed Quark support forum if you
> want more info:
>
> http://www.charmedquark.com/www2/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=UBB1&Number=4091&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
>
> If you just want to evaluate CQC and see what it can do and how it does
> it, without having to first figure out how to connect it to your devices,
> then you can just download it and install it and go through the 'Quick
> Tutorial' which uses a device simulator to simulate a small set of
> devices. So don't have to have any devices actually connected in order to
> do the whole tutorial, though if you have an IRMan or USB-UIRT you can do
> one extra part of the tutorial about IR receiving. But using the device
> simulator the tutorial can take you through all of the major features of
> the system without your having to figure out how to hoook it up to any of
> your devices first. So it's pretty quick and simple to go through and get
> an understanding of what CQC does and how. CQC has a 30 day trial period,
> so you have plenty of time to evaluate it and see if it works for you.
>
> On the web site, go to the Try/But menu item, then the Try It section. The
> product download link is there, as well as the link to the Quick Tutorial
> document.
>
> If you want more high level info before actually diving in physically, in
> the Documentation menu item, check the Oveview and Using CQC documents.
>
> -------------------------------------
> Dean Roddey
> Chairman/CTO, Charmed Quark Systems
> www.charmedquark.com
>