TheBackShed.com

Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Option autorun on....has an option!

Author

Message

circuit
Senior Member

Joined: 10/01/2016
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 296

Posted: 07:48pm 23 Feb 2026

Copy link to clipboard

Print this post

I find it astonishing that I have now been building MicroMite-based devices for over ten years (starting with the ever-faithful MX150), mostly for embedded control. I have just routinely typed in OPTION AUTORUN ON and the chips just do their job forever. I even have a MicroMite Plus MX470 security system that has been reading RFID cards several times a day and providing alarm security since 2019 - constantly on for seven years without a hitch. I therefore didn't notice that OPTION AUTORUN ON appears to have grown an option between version 5.07 and 5.08. Quite simply, I didn't notice because an issue never arose until a week ago.

I have two 2350 boards (Peter's design) and two 2040 boards running as embedded controllers and suddenly three of the boards failed to operate but their heartbeats were blinking away just fine. Up until now, they have all run faultlessly, receiving commands by serial link from a 2350 master controller. When I hooked in, I found that the options list no longer contained AUTORUN on three of the boards. Most puzzled, I reinstated it and off they went, as well as ever and remain so a week later; no changes to the programs nor the received commands. Puzzled, I looked in the manual to find that OPTION AUTORUN now has the additional option of NORESET.

The manual now states "Specifying the optional parameter "NORESET" will maintain AUTORUN even if the program causes a system error (by default this will cause the firmware to cancel any OPTION AUTORUN setting)".

Clearly, I remain puzzled. What defines a "system error"? that causes the permanent option autorun on to be cancelled? Why was the NORESET added to the firmware? What was the issue? Most importantly, why might my boards suddenly erase the auto-startup but now behave perfectly?
Edited 2026-02-24 06:04 by circuit

phil99

Guru

Joined: 11/02/2018
Location: Australia
Posts: 3028

Posted: 09:12pm 23 Feb 2026

Copy link to clipboard

Print this post

My recollection (may contain traces of nuts) is a few people had their Picos get stuck in infinite reboot loops from which the only escape was Clear_flash.

So Peter added the auto-cancellation of OPTION AUTORUN so the error that caused the crash could be fixed and OPTION AUTORUN reinstated.

Others complained about this as their unattended systems would occasionally stop and not restart, thus "NORESET" was added.

Instead of OPTION AUTORUN you could add this to the start of the program.

Sub MM.STARTUP
Pause 99 'allow time to register Ctrl-C if in a re-boot loop
'Add some code to test for possible cause of crash (optional)
RUN
End Sub

Print this page

To reply to this topic, you need to log in.