I have had the problem occasionally that the radio wasn't recognized
after powering it up. I have always been able to have the radio
recognized when this occurs by going into the device manager and
disabling the 1394 host controller and then re-enabling it (right click
options on host controller in device tree). Very quick and instantly the
radio is recognized. I use the FlexRadio program, (the program used to
check the 1394 chip set information), to verify the connection after the
reenable.
I make sure PowerSDR is not running when I do this.
The radio is a Flex-5000A and the OS is Windows 7 (64 bit).
With my connection problem, the FlexRadio program will correctly
indicate whether I have a radio connection or not.
73,
Bill
On 11/26/2010 12:23 PM, Matt Steven AI1P wrote:
Hello and Happy Thanksgiving / CQWW weekend Flexers!
I have a puzzle for you to ponder, and it's definitely not one of
those easy-to-fix ones, I'm fairly sure, which is why this story
takes a few minutes to tell:
I've had this recurring and completely inconsistent problem with my
F3k since I got it almost a year ago. Every once in awhile, it simply
refuses to light up the firewire cable at all, and the only cure for
it is to leave the flex unpowered overnight, after which it resumes
working as if nothing was wrong. I'm hoping someone on the list has
also experienced this issue and can offer a suggestion.
This happens about once a month.
Since the flex is my only radio, you can see that this means I am at
the mercy of its whims when a contest weekend rolls around, and get
tempted to just leave the computer and the flex running just to be
sure it won't fail when I need it. You too may miss some easy points
when I'm not on the air!
To help diagnose this, I purchased a firewire cable that has a LED in
it to show when it's operational. When the radio is misbehaving, the
cable lights up for about .5 seconds and then goes dark. No amount of
reconnecting or side swapping can get it to light up. On the other
hand, when it is operating correctly, the cable stays lit from the
get-go. So there is some sort of issue occurring during the
negotiation between the devices that causes one or the other to give
up on its bad days.
The computer never sees the device in that case of course, since the
firewire connection is never actually activated. And I have a boat
anchor until it gets a chance to have a nice nap.
I've had this happen with two different (but similar model) computers,
so I am fairly sure it is not a problem on the computer end. They're
running a recommended TI chipset. It fails on XP, it fails on Windows
7. I am more or less convinced that this is not even a software thing
since it won't even complete the low level connection negotiation.
Some time back I talked with Flex support enough to establish that
this is not a "driver problem" or a firewire cable problem (having
replaced it several times to be sure) and they have not provided a
satisfactory answer nor an offer to exchange or repair the radio. I
understand that: fixing things that fail at random and without any
repeatability is hard, and I suppose they would rather have a mostly
happy but occasionally disappointed customer than take back a radio
that they may have a slim chance at fixing and turning around, or
passing it off to some other unsuspecting person, which I am also not
going to do. I'm also reluctant to have the radio sit on the bench @
Flex for the whole of contest season while they try to get the failure
to happen again. A no-win!
Here's hoping some genius amongst you knows what may be going wrong
and what could be done about it!
73!
Matt AI1P
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