MERCS

Introduction

Entries/results software for UK Badge or Championship events (or any age-class based event); or relay events. Handles EMIT, SportIdent or conventional control cards. Special facilities and/or scoring for JK, British Championships, BSOA Score Championships, British Schools Orienteering Champinships, Harvester Trophy amongst others.

MERCS is now capable of Random Allocation of Start Times. ROAST v1.02 requires Kernel and Entries v2.50 or higher.

Commentary module handles input from controls either by direct serial line or from a radio receiver.

This software is available as part of a results service or by annual licence. Please contact Michael Napier if you want a results service or if you want to use MERCS.

Installation

For a quick quide to installation and running MERCS see Installation Guide

Download

Install files

• Visual Foxpro 7 runtime library setup executable (8Mb) Run (or download, save and run). Not needed if already installed for Colour.
  
• Installation file v2.85a setup executable (4Mb). Run (or download, save and run). This installation is not required if MERCS v2.85 has already been installed. You now need to apply the update files for any module showing a version number higher than v2.85a (e.g. 2.88) and for the "Results processing module" and for the "Relay results processing module".
  

Update files.
Download, then use WinZip or similar to extract contained files into the MERCS installation folder (normally "c:\program files\neper\mercs") or the MERCS files folder (e.g. "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\mrcdata\files")

• Kernel update file v2.88 zip file of latest kernel modules: mrc288.app (360kb)
  
• Entries update file v2.88 zip file of latest entries modules: courses.app and forms.app (1030kb)
  
• Results processing update file v2.88 zip file of latest results processing module: mrcpeps.app (790kb) [please obtain password from Michael Napier]
  
• Relay entries and registration update file v2.88 zip file of latest relay entries and registration modules: rlyclass.app, rlyforms.app, rlyteams.app (830kb)
  
• Relay results processing update file v2.88 zip file of latest relay results processing module: rlyeps.app (600kb) [please obtain password from Michael Napier]
  

Licencing

A single licence covers the use of both MERCS and Colour. The annual licence varies from £50 to £170 per annum plus VAT depending on the Club's BOF membership numbers. The licence includes telephone and e-mail support and you may request specific enhancements.

PDF Support

MERCS (and Colour) now supports PDF output. Two extra components are required: dll0611.zip and library7.app (if browser won't let you download library7.app, download library7.zip and use WinZip to unpack library7.app [do NOT unpack dll0611.zip]). Do NO. Download and save both into the same folder as mercs.exe (or clr.exe). Then, in Maintenance, select PDF and Install from the Settings menu. Thereafter, in any report window showing a PDF button you should get a PDF output for that report. However, please view any such report in Adobe PDF Reader to check that the report has created properly: especially check that landscape reports are not cut off at the 8 inch margin. Please forward any faulty reports to Michael Napier.

SportIdent Support Documents

These Word documents are available for download in a single self-extracting zip file si-docs.exe

• Introduction to SportIdent. This word document contains basic information and technical details about SportIdent equipment and suggestions how SportIdent impacts on different areas of event organisation.
  
• SI Manager Training programme. This word document provides a series of self-teaching lessons on how to use SI Manager to prepare SportIdent equipment.
  
• Control Programmer's Guidelines. This word document gives detailed instructions on how to prepare SportIdent equipment for an orienteering event.