Windows 7: Lego USB Tower

Hi

I bought the Lego Robotics System some years ago and since some months I use it again with Java + Eclipse + Lejos but the problem is since I have W7 the USB Tower doesn't work because I only have Drivers for XP.

Do you have any idear how I can get it to work on W7?

Thanks for help!
Greetings
Julian

try finding vista drivers they might work better

Someone claimed that using this patch made it work under Vista:

Site:
LEGO Education - MINDSTORMS®: download

Direct Link:
http://cache.lego.com/downloads/education/tower164.zip

If it doesn't work without compatibility mode, try installing it with Vista compatibility mode.

Good luck.

I was unable to find a driver for the LEGO USB tower that works on Windows 7 64bit OS. I suspect the tower164 driver should work on 32bit Windows 7, but most people have 64bit, and no one seems interested in making a 64bit version of the tower driver.

I was able to use the USB tower from Windows XP running under Virtual PC.

You may want to get one of the older serial port IR towers and a USB to serial port converter. That worked for me on Windows 7 64bit.

The serial IR towers are available at BrickLink - Unofficial LEGO® Marketplace or Lego Education - Loading...

Steve Putz
Robotics Learning Home

P.S. If anyone wants to help me figure out how to create a 64 bit driver, I might be interested in making the attempt.

Steve I'd love a win 7 x64 tower driver for my ROBOLAB 2.5.4 I've spent tons of $$ on the ROBOLab and I'm stuck.

Brett Schumm
Anaheim HS
Orange County, ca

I am interested in an Windows 7 64 bit tower driver.

jsut bought an old rcx system for my son to play with, cant get it to install on windows 7... need help please!!!!

So using a Serial really worked on Win 7 64x?

I was unable to get win 7 working, even though some people say they did on this page: Coding stuffs: Robotics Invention System 2.0 Freeze XP (Hyperthreaded CPU)

using these instructions.
Coding stuffs: Robotics Invention System 2.0 Freeze XP (Hyperthreaded CPU)

In reply to Steve Putz:

Hi Steve,

Thanks for posting this. I was able to get my Windows 7 netbook to use the USB IR tower with Eclipse two years ago and just three weeks ago upgraded my desktop to Windows 7 and couldn't get it to work. Now I know why: the netbook uses 32-bit Win7 Starter and my desktop uses 64-bit.

I never would have thought of using a serial IR tower, but since seeing your post and by chance having a serial tower, now I've got it working in Eclipse with my 64-bit Windows 7! I still have three RCX bricks so this is perfect.

In case anyone needs some additional details, I bought a cable from Amazon:
"Plugable USB to RS-232 DB9 Serial Adapter (Prolific PL2302HX Chipset) (Sold by Plugable Technologies)"
It cost $11.95, the carton says "Windows 7 compatible" and came with a CD and instructions to run the CD before attaching the tower via the cable. IIRC, when I ran the CD it created COM9. I then ran the RIS 2.0 installation CD that came with the RCX and when it came to the part of finding the IR tower it automatically found COM9! It offered to download the LEGO firmware and downloaded it from my 64-bit Win 7 box. Very encouraging to see that happen.

I downloaded and unzipped the leJOS Eclipse RCX plugin to the Eclipse\plugins folder, restarted Eclipse, and the leJOS plugin appeared. In the configuration pane it only offered COM1, COM2, COM3, and COM4, so I had to use Windows Device Mangager to rename COM9 to COM1. But then Wow! I was able to download the RCX leJOS 3.0 firmware to the RCX right from Eclipse. Very nice. I keep a separate Eclipse workspace for RCX projects and have the full Eclipse experience available for programming the RCX and downloading via the serial IR tower.

Looking forward to seeing you again at the 2012 Bricks By the Bay convention in a few months. Thanks again for the tip about the serial tower.

Walt

I just installed my serial tower with a serial to USB converter cable and driver from eBay $2.40. I am using RIS 2 software and I can talk to my brick on my Win 7 laptop and my XP desktop. Every USB port requires a separate install of the driver. COM 6, COM 7 are the from USB ports on my desktop computer. Bricx Command Center is also working with the converter cable.