To all Flexers who have purchased the new FlexControl tuning knob
Since the FlexControls are now shipping in volume and will start showing
up at your QTH shortly, there is an installation consideration you
should be aware of if you use VSPmanager for virtual com port access.
There is a bug in the Eltima API used in VSPmanager that results in the
possibility of the FlexControl's assigned physical com port to conflict
with an already defined virtual com port resulting in at worst, a
Windows crash (BSoD). There have also been reports of other virtual com
port software causing issues too, so this condition is not exclusive to
VSPmanager.
This information is in the FlexControl errata that is included with the
FlexControl, but I thought it would be useful to provide a proactive
notice for those who might want to take action before your FlexControl
arrives. You can download a copy of the FlexControl errata using this
URL: http://support.flex-radio.com/Downloads.aspx?id=370
The issue is that VSPmanager is not properly reporting it's virtual com
ports to Windows and when the FlexControl drivers are initialized and a
physical com port is assigned by Windows to the FlexControl process,
that assigned com port is already in use by VSPmanager. Two
applications cannot have exclusive use of the same comport, resulting in
the operating system crash.
This situation arises when you have virtual comports that are assigned
to low numbered comports; such as 1-9 since that is the likely range of
com ports Windows will assign to new physical com ports.
You can mitigate this problem in two ways.
First by defining virtual com ports that are not in the range of 1-9.
So if you have virtual com port pairs defined where either of the com
port end points are in this range, delete the com port pair and
re-create it with the com port end points greater than 9.
If you have already installed PowerSDR 2.1.x, then remove VSPmanager
(make sure you delete the com port pairs first), install PowerSDR v2.1
RC3 or later, get the FlexControl working properly and then install
VSPmanager and define your virtual com port pairs. In this case, since
the FlexControl is already installed and has a physical com port
assigned, VSPmanager correctly identifies the physical comport that the
FlexControl is using and will not allow you to create a virtual com port
using the com port already in use resulting in no com port conflict.
-Tim
---
W4TME
FlexRadio Systems Internet Systems Admin.
Product Verification Team
Tune In Excitement^(TM)
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