1. check your serial connection. transfer large (~4kB, 8kB) file forward- back and check, if there are no mismatches. The RS232 could be arranged wrongly and it doesn't shows up.
2. check your A.TOP file. You can see where what parameter is located in the file. You can check if there are zeros in a TOP file
3. You can set parameters manually reading from printed A.TOP file. Lame
4. And yes, to set parameters from TOP file you need DATA PIP.