[Flexradio] New PS. Switching or not?
Hello friends: I have to buy a new power supply for my 5000a. What is your advice? Switching or not switching ps ? TNX a lot. -- Rubén Navarro Huedo http://www.palotes.com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] New PS. Switching or not?
I used my Astron 50amp big heavy power supply. It may be overkill but it's solid. good luck I prefer non switching. But QST had a review of switching ps a while back. You should be able to find that review online. I think you want the supply that creates the least noise. Some switching supplies are much better than others. good luck On 7/20/2008 3:44:12 AM, Ruben Navarro Huedo ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Hello friends: I have to buy a new power supply for my 5000a. What is your advice? Switching or not switching ps ? TNX a lot. -- Rubén Navarro Huedo http://www.palotes.com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio. com/ ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] differences between PSK31 demodulators
There are some not understood faults in the use of VAC, it being closed source, etc. The following is a general rule of thumb. Open on the PowerSDR side, a VAC cable that is a integer divisor of the sample rate in the radio. Open the MixW, etc. AFTER this cable has been opened by PowerSDR. The internal sample rate conversion and buffering inside VAC then adjusts correctly. I really wish we had an open source, free replacement for VAC but I have stopped hoping for it. In general Windows sux and Vista sux worst of all and building a virtual sound card from the device developers kit to support all of these platforms is a painful process to say the very least. Bob N4HY ARRL SDR Working Group Chair Member: ARRL, AMSAT, AMSAT-DL, TAPR, Packrats, NJQRP, QRP ARCI, QCWA, FRC. Trample the slow Hurdle the dead -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dudley Hurry Sent: Saturday, July 19, 2008 9:12 PM To: Brian Lloyd Cc: FlexRadio Reflector Subject: Re: [Flexradio] differences between PSK31 demodulators Brian, Try DM780 that comes with Ham Radio Deluxe. You have to download the entire HRD package, but then you can run only DM-780 for the digital. In the Super Browser, you can have 20 to 30 PSK QSOs going at once, and it's decode rate is better than MixW I think.. 73, Dudley WA5QPZ Brian Lloyd wrote: Making progress here. VAC is working and I am trying different digital- mode applications. It is interesting to see how different the quality of the copy is. I have my MacBook Pro connected via analog cable to line out and am using CocoaModem to monitor the off-air signal as I fumble with VAC and various digital mode programs on the PC, i.e. MixW and MultiPSK. It is interesting to see the difference in the quality of the copy between the various programs. Right now I am looking at both the Mac and PC printing out a PSK31 QSO but the error rate for MixW is *MUCH* higher than the error rate in CocoaModem on the Mac. Not having any other experience with this what should I expect? No, I have not tried routing the analog signal to the sound card in the PC to see how that works. So, since I have no experience with Windows-based soundcard digital mode programs, should I be looking at something other than MixW? MultiPSK's UI is much more cluttered but seems to work pretty well. I occasionally play with PSK31 but am much more interested in more robust modes like MFSK and Olivia. -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] New PS. Switching or not?
Ruben, I prefer a switching supply due to their smaller size, lighter weight, higher efficiency. I have 3 of the Alinco DM-330MV switching supplies. These supplies are rated at 32 Amp max, 26 Amp continuous, and handle my Flex-5000A with no problem. Some of the earlier switching power supplies generated some RF hash, but I have never heard any noise with the Alinco. 73, Ray, K9DUR ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] New PS. Switching or not?
I would definitely go non-switching but just a reminder: You are already using switching power supply in your shack and often it is of the cheapest quality known to man: in you PC. I honestly believe that people should think putting in a high-quality pc power supply. Unfortunately a non-switching pc ps doesn't exist (to my knowledge). Neal On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 6:51 AM, FireBrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I used my Astron 50amp big heavy power supply. It may be overkill but it's solid. good luck I prefer non switching. But QST had a review of switching ps a while back. You should be able to find that review online. I think you want the supply that creates the least noise. Some switching supplies are much better than others. good luck On 7/20/2008 3:44:12 AM, Ruben Navarro Huedo ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Hello friends: I have to buy a new power supply for my 5000a. What is your advice? Switching or not switching ps ? TNX a lot. -- Rubén Navarro Huedo http://www.palotes.com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio. com/ ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ -- Neal Campbell Abroham Neal Software Programming Services for Windows, OS X and Linux (540) 242 0911 - Try Spot for OS X, the intelligent DXCluster Client at www.abrohamnealsoftware.com - introduction priced at $10.99 - For a great dog book, visit www.abrohamneal.com - See the FlexRadio Systems Flex-5000a in action at www.flex-videos.com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] New PS. Switching or not?
Well, guys, I try to use reflector comments to give me a heads up whenever possible. As soon as I placed my order for the 5000A last spring I immediately started to think about the power supply and had decided that I wanted an old fashioned supply. After some time I found a Hewlett Packard 6200 series on eBay with remote sensing, good regulation and ripple specs and I suspected a monster transformer and capacitor bank. I was right! After the recent comments I ordered a one farad capacitor which arrived last week, went into the junk box and found a mercury wetted contactor to short out the start up resistor so I can turn things off and on without too much worry. So now I can sit back and read the current comments without worry! Cooling and shielding are other areas that I've tried to pay close attention to. I won't comment on those, though, since Gerald, Eric and Tim might get excited! The XYL calls this sort of thing Another Of Your Overdone Projects. 73 Lee K9WRU - Original Message - From: Neal Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: FireBrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: FlexRadio List flexradio@flex-radio.biz Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 7:50 AM Subject: Re: [Flexradio] New PS. Switching or not? I would definitely go non-switching but just a reminder: You are already using switching power supply in your shack and often it is of the cheapest quality known to man: in you PC. I honestly believe that people should think putting in a high-quality pc power supply. Unfortunately a non-switching pc ps doesn't exist (to my knowledge). Neal On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 6:51 AM, FireBrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I used my Astron 50amp big heavy power supply. It may be overkill but it's solid. good luck I prefer non switching. But QST had a review of switching ps a while back. You should be able to find that review online. I think you want the supply that creates the least noise. Some switching supplies are much better than others. good luck On 7/20/2008 3:44:12 AM, Ruben Navarro Huedo ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Hello friends: I have to buy a new power supply for my 5000a. What is your advice? Switching or not switching ps ? TNX a lot. -- Rubén Navarro Huedo http://www.palotes.com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio. com/ ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ -- Neal Campbell Abroham Neal Software Programming Services for Windows, OS X and Linux (540) 242 0911 - Try Spot for OS X, the intelligent DXCluster Client at www.abrohamnealsoftware.com - introduction priced at $10.99 - For a great dog book, visit www.abrohamneal.com - See the FlexRadio Systems Flex-5000a in action at www.flex-videos.com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
[Flexradio] rtty frequency display
Is there any way to get PowerSDR to display mark frequency rather than carrier frequency while in DIGL? Would certainly make RTTY operation easier. -- 73, Bob K5SM ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
[Flexradio] Voice Keyer v1.2
Version 1.2 of my VoiceKeyer program has been released. The only change is the addition of a None option to the list of serial ports. Selecting None will prevent VoiceKeyer from activating the radio PTT. This may be useful if you want to use VOX for PTT. 73, Ray, K9DUR ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
[Flexradio] Vista Experience
I recently purchased a computer (HP Slimline) which was to be my standalone computer just for the Flex 5000A. It arrived with Vista on it. ?I was able to use it with SDR V1.12.0 but a few things on the display were missing such as the cpu usage . The real problems started when I tried to use it with HRD. I could get them talking to each other but there was a very long delay between actually changing frequency on the Flex and HRD recognizing a change had been made,? soon there after? all kinds of strange lock up problems would occur resulting in having to close everything and starting over. The combination would only stay up and running for a few minutes. ?Even the Flex by it self would only stay up for a couple of hours without re-booting. I tried both N8BV and con0com when using HRD. I finally re-formated and put XP Pro on the computer, a time consuming accomplishment, and everything works ok. Fred W1FC ? ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Voice Keyer v1.2
Sorry, forgot to tell you how to get the new version in my original message. The URL is: http://www.qsl.net/k9dur/downloads 73, Ray, K9DUR -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ray, K9DUR Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 10:45 AM To: 'Flex Radio Reflector' Subject: [Flexradio] Voice Keyer v1.2 Version 1.2 of my VoiceKeyer program has been released. The only change is the addition of a None option to the list of serial ports. Selecting None will prevent VoiceKeyer from activating the radio PTT. This may be useful if you want to use VOX for PTT. 73, Ray, K9DUR ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences between PSK31 demodulators)
At 12:32 AM 7/20/2008, Brian Lloyd wrote: snip Huh. And no-one said anything about the spurs and varying noise level either. What spurs are you seeing? More details on the varying noise level? Jerry W4UK ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] differences between PSK31 demodulators
After initially buying and trying VAC just because everybody does it, I gave it up and use conventional audio cables now. I use RTTY predominantly, and when I copied my tx'ed signal on another radio. I could see periodic hiccups that garbled an occasional (maybe 1 of 10-20) characters with VAC 3.12. If there ever was a compelling reason to use VAC, I missed it. Given its faults, why is VAC still being recommended? Jerry W4UK At 06:56 AM 7/20/2008, Bob McGwier wrote: There are some not understood faults in the use of VAC, it being closed source, etc. The following is a general rule of thumb. Open on the PowerSDR side, a VAC cable that is a integer divisor of the sample rate in the radio. Open the MixW, etc. AFTER this cable has been opened by PowerSDR. The internal sample rate conversion and buffering inside VAC then adjusts correctly. I really wish we had an open source, free replacement for VAC but I have stopped hoping for it. In general Windows sux and Vista sux worst of all and building a virtual sound card from the device developers kit to support all of these platforms is a painful process to say the very least. Bob N4HY ARRL SDR Working Group Chair Member: ARRL, AMSAT, AMSAT-DL, TAPR, Packrats, NJQRP, QRP ARCI, QCWA, FRC. Trample the slow Hurdle the dead -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dudley Hurry Sent: Saturday, July 19, 2008 9:12 PM To: Brian Lloyd Cc: FlexRadio Reflector Subject: Re: [Flexradio] differences between PSK31 demodulators Brian, Try DM780 that comes with Ham Radio Deluxe. You have to download the entire HRD package, but then you can run only DM-780 for the digital. In the Super Browser, you can have 20 to 30 PSK QSOs going at once, and it's decode rate is better than MixW I think.. 73, Dudley WA5QPZ Brian Lloyd wrote: Making progress here. VAC is working and I am trying different digital- mode applications. It is interesting to see how different the quality of the copy is. I have my MacBook Pro connected via analog cable to line out and am using CocoaModem to monitor the off-air signal as I fumble with VAC and various digital mode programs on the PC, i.e. MixW and MultiPSK. It is interesting to see the difference in the quality of the copy between the various programs. Right now I am looking at both the Mac and PC printing out a PSK31 QSO but the error rate for MixW is *MUCH* higher than the error rate in CocoaModem on the Mac. Not having any other experience with this what should I expect? No, I have not tried routing the analog signal to the sound card in the PC to see how that works. So, since I have no experience with Windows-based soundcard digital mode programs, should I be looking at something other than MixW? MultiPSK's UI is much more cluttered but seems to work pretty well. I occasionally play with PSK31 but am much more interested in more robust modes like MFSK and Olivia. -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Vista Experience
Fred, I use an HP A6220N dual core e4500 with Vista seemed to work fine with SDR, HRD, vcomm plus several other programs except DDUTIL (Only one). DXBASE help files would not work until I downloaded a Microsoft patchnow the help files work. 73 de KE4WY Jim -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 10:47 AM To: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] Vista Experience I recently purchased a computer (HP Slimline) which was to be my standalone computer just for the Flex 5000A. It arrived with Vista on it. ?I was able to use it with SDR V1.12.0 but a few things on the display were missing such as the cpu usage . The real problems started when I tried to use it with HRD. I could get them talking to each other but there was a very long delay between actually changing frequency on the Flex and HRD recognizing a change had been made,? soon there after? all kinds of strange lock up problems would occur resulting in having to close everything and starting over. The combination would only stay up and running for a few minutes. ?Even the Flex by it self would only stay up for a couple of hours without re-booting. I tried both N8BV and con0com when using HRD. I finally re-formated and put XP Pro on the computer, a time consuming accomplishment, and everything works ok. Fred W1FC ? ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences between PSK31 demodulators)
Over a year ago, many of us sent contributions to someone for a new replacement VAC type program. What ever happened to that new VAC type program? Are there other options to VAC, other than real cables? But I do have VAC 4.08 working fine with programs other than MixW. Just can't seem to get MixW to not have the audio pops. However, DM 780 ,WSJT, MMTTY, and others are fine with VAC. John, N3WT -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Jerry Flanders Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 11:05 AM To: Brian Lloyd; flexradio@flex-radio.biz Reflector Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences between PSK31 demodulators) At 12:32 AM 7/20/2008, Brian Lloyd wrote: snip Huh. And no-one said anything about the spurs and varying noise level either. What spurs are you seeing? More details on the varying noise level? Jerry W4UK ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences betweenPSK31 demodulators)
The topic of audio dropouts on the SDR-1000 and Flex5000 comes up frequently. I use an SDR-1000. For a very long time, I wasn't able to move off of V1.8.x of PowerSDR because V1.10x caused all SORTs of audio popping. I was finally able to solve this after a very long series of trial-and-error sessions (see http://mail.flex-radio.biz/pipermail/flexradio_flex-radio.biz/2008-Janu ary/021534.html for a report of the parameters that finally worked for me). As I reported back in August of last year http://mail.flex-radio.biz/pipermail/flexradio_flex-radio.biz/2007-Augu st/018174.html I had V1.8.x working and NEVER saw a pop in the audio output. Using the same hardware, the same version of VAC, the same drivers... and changing JUST the version of PowerSDR I was using, problems immediately appeared. Thus, we're likely dealing with a complex interaction problem, and I don't think we can lay the blame for the problem solely on VAC. So, all I can say to people who are having dropouts or pops on digital modes is keep experimenting... you almost certainly WILL find a setting that works, even if it doesn't work 100% of the time (I still get pops, but only once every few minutes as opposed to once every few SECONDS). I'm sorry... I know that's not super helpful... but random walking through combinations of options is the only thing that worked for me. de Peter K1PGV P.S. Regarding writing a replacement for VAC: I write Windows drivers for a living, and even teach seminars on Windows driver development. I'm sorry to say that audio drivers are their own little specialty in Windows. So, despite my having designed and written (quite literally) dozens of complex Windows drivers over the past 15 years, my experience is close to useless when it comes to writing audio drivers. The audio driver models in Windows are just that unique. THAT's why it's so hard to find somebody to write a (competent) replacement for VAC. If it was a USB device or a SCSI adapter or some busmaster DMA device, a free replacement would have been written for the benefit of the community long ago. ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
[Flexradio] I've got a Yaesu Ft1000MP Tech manual
Found it today cleaning out a cabinet. It's in a 3 ring folder. It's available for cost of mailing and a donation to my beer fund. first come, first served - Gaelic - What you speak after drinking too much Scotch! - Bill H. in Chicagoland webcams at http://76.16.160.118:8080/ Current Weather at http://hhweather.webhop.org ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] rtty frequency display
Bob, I think that is the last piece that needs to be done to PSDR to make it operate RTTY the way that most users expect... I think RTTY should have been designed as a separate sub DIGI mode that acted exactly like CW is handled with respect to offset vs dial vs CAT ( except for TX ) .. Historically, RTTY operational techniques were derived from CW techniques. Suggest you enter an enhancement request on the Flex site... AL, K0VM Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2008 09:16:36 -0500 From: Robert Redmon [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Flexradio] rtty frequency display To: Flex Radio Reflector flexradio@flex-radio.biz Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Is there any way to get PowerSDR to display mark frequency rather than carrier frequency while in DIGL? Would certainly make RTTY operation easier. -- 73, Bob K5SM ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] differences between PSK31 demodulators
On Jul 20, 2008, at 3:56 AM, Bob McGwier wrote: There are some not understood faults in the use of VAC, it being closed source, etc. The following is a general rule of thumb. Open on the PowerSDR side, a VAC cable that is a integer divisor of the sample rate in the radio. That is what I assumed and what I tried. In fact, I assumed it should be a power-of-2 divisor so that it just requires a shift rather than a divide. I am using a sampling rate of 96Ksps for the '5K and 12K for the VAC 'wire'. Open the MixW, etc. AFTER this cable has been opened by PowerSDR. The internal sample rate conversion and buffering inside VAC then adjusts correctly. This I also assumed. For more info, I also used the same buffer size (2048) and selected mono output which should present 1/2 the load. I also selected 1/2 duplex in MixW for its interface to the sound card. I can't think of anything else to do that would reduce the load on the system other than to reduce the sampling rate to the '5K. As it is, CPU utilization bounces between 13% and 20%. This is NOT a heavy load on the system. What this is telling me is that there is a task scheduling problem in WinXP. Something is causing context switching latency between the components and results in underrun and/or buffer starvation for MixW. So, would someone with enough understanding of this abortion of an operating system please tell me which unnecessary tasks I can turn off to avoid unnecessary context switching? I am betting that there is some useless, bug-ridden, cycle-stealing, Microsoft-provided feature in my XP installation that is causing this problem when it steals multiples of ms of CPU time periodically. And then there are the AMD vs. Intel and 32-bit vs. 64-bit issues as well. sigh I did install a tool called What's Running to try to see all the tasks that are consuming resources. It is a long and hair-raising list. I really wish we had an open source, free replacement for VAC but I have stopped hoping for it. In general Windows sux Amen Brother! and Vista sux worst of all I would have used stronger language but I am with you 100%. and building a virtual sound card from the device developers kit to support all of these platforms is a painful process to say the very least. No doubt. There is something to be said for allowing a protocol implement your interface. -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences between PSK31 demodulators)
On Jul 20, 2008, at 8:04 AM, Jerry Flanders wrote: At 12:32 AM 7/20/2008, Brian Lloyd wrote: snip Huh. And no-one said anything about the spurs and varying noise level either. What spurs are you seeing? More details on the varying noise level? See my original posting of about 48 hours ago. Basically my 5K always shows these little spurs that are 10dB-15dB above the noise floor that wander about opposite the tuning direction. Some frequencies when selected end up with a broad-spectrum increase in noise floor. The window for this behavior is a couple hundred Hz wide. Things get worse as I go up in frequency. There are LOTs of them on 6M. (Hmm, DDS cruft above the Nyquist frequency aliased back into the passband?) Jerry W4UK -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] differences between PSK31 demodulators
On Jul 20, 2008, at 8:29 AM, Jerry Flanders wrote: After initially buying and trying VAC just because everybody does it, I gave it up and use conventional audio cables now. I am beginning to think I may have to do just that. Right now I am using an audio cable to my Mac which is running Cocoamodem. The copy is excellent. It just offends my sensibilities to have to convert back to the analog domain as an intermediate step. I use RTTY predominantly, and when I copied my tx'ed signal on another radio. I could see periodic hiccups that garbled an occasional (maybe 1 of 10-20) characters with VAC 3.12. Precisely what I am seeing! If there ever was a compelling reason to use VAC, I missed it. Given its faults, why is VAC still being recommended? What else can replace it? -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] I've got a Yaesu Ft1000MP Tech manual
sorry I clicked on the wrong F and it's already spoken for On 7/20/2008 12:19:38 PM, FireBrick ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Found it today cleaning out a cabinet. It's in a 3 ring folder. It's available for cost of mailing and a donation to my beer fund. first come, first served - Gaelic - What you speak after drinking too much Scotch! - Bill H. in Chicagoland webcams at http://76.16.160.118:8080/ Current Weather at http://hhweather.webhop.org ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio. com/ ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences betweenPSK31 demodulators)
So, all I can say to people who are having dropouts or pops on digital modes is keep experimenting... you almost certainly WILL find a setting that works, even if it doesn't work 100% of the time (I still get pops, but only once every few minutes as opposed to once every few SECONDS). I'm sorry... I know that's not super helpful... but random walking through combinations of options is the only thing that worked for me. I'm sorry Peter but this is just ... stupid. Not that you are stupid (on the contrary!) but being forced into this approach is stupid because there IS another way. I agree, when the system is treated as a monolithic black-box it is the only way one CAN address the problem (which means that, for most of us this is the only way to deal with the problem). OTOH, there are people with the tools to allow us to see inside the black-box. I would give large odds that the problem is one of some high-priority task stealing lots of cycles on a periodic basis or a scheduling issue between the threads of PowerSDR, VAC, and whatever other digital mode program one is running. It is even possible that MixW is stealing cycles from VAC causing VAC to toss buffers (fail to accept or process buffers from PowerSDR) or produce a buffer underrun into MixW. I would bet money that: 1. removing unnecessary tasks from the machine; 2. better managing thread/task priorities to ensure more equitable CPU sharing; 3. enabling round-robin scheduling (if such exists in the NT kernel); would make the problem go away permanently. -- Brian Lloyd Granite Bay Montessori brian AT gbmontessori DOT com 9330 Sierra College Blvd. +1.916.367.2131 (voice) Roseville, CA 95661, USA http://www.gbmontessori.com I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things . . . — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry PGP key ID: 12095C52A32A1B6C PGP key fingerprint: 3B1D BA11 4913 3254 B6E0 CC09 1209 5C52 A32A 1B6C -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] differences between PSK31 demodulators
At 02:28 PM 7/20/2008, Brian Lloyd wrote: SNIP If there ever was a compelling reason to use VAC, I missed it. Given its faults, why is VAC still being recommended? What else can replace it? I bought a lifetime supply of these for less than I paid for VAC: http://www.mpja.com/prodinfo.asp?number=15666+CB Jerry W4UK ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] differences between PSK31 demodulators
At 02:22 PM 7/20/2008, K0VM wrote: Jerry, I guess that VAC is still recommended , because for many of us, the current, paid for,version works reliably! I wonder if the hiccups don't reveal themselves in ordinary digital mode use, where the only person listening to the transmitted signal is a non-critical RTTY/PSK31 QSO partner who can tolerate an occasional garble and just mark it up to a propagation anomaly or QRM. I hear other guys complain about hiccups, so I am not the only one, and it is unlikely that they were using the same version of VAC I used. Perhaps more people should actually verify their off-air digital signals like I did on another local receiver. I was trying to set up a contest RTTY station at the time, and could not tolerate any unnecessary garbling of my exchange not caused by the ionosphere or QRM. I am not familiar with the use of VAC in the phone modes - the hiccups may not show at all there. SNIP With the SDR-1000, using cables might have required a total of three sound cards in the computer, with the F5K just one computer sound card is required. I don't see how you would ever need more than two with the SDR-1000. What mode would ever require three? Jerry W4UK ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] differences between PSK31 demodulators
On Jul 20, 2008, at 11:53 AM, Jerry Flanders wrote: At 02:28 PM 7/20/2008, Brian Lloyd wrote: SNIP If there ever was a compelling reason to use VAC, I missed it. Given its faults, why is VAC still being recommended? What else can replace it? I bought a lifetime supply of these for less than I paid for VAC: http://www.mpja.com/prodinfo.asp?number=15666+CB I understand what you are saying Jerry but I must reject it for philosophical reasons. There is no valid reason to have to convert back to the analog domain to solve this problem. That is just Rube Goldberg. Yes, it may work but it is just ... wrong. And yes, I am using that approach for now but there has to be a way to fix this properly. -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] differences between PSK31 demodulators
We completely agree that you should not have to convert back to the analog domain. That is why we and VAC do NOT do it. ;-). Go read some more. Bob ARRL SDR Working Group Chair Member: ARRL, AMSAT, AMSAT-DL, TAPR, Packrats, NJQRP, QRP ARCI, QCWA, FRC. Trample the slow Hurdle the dead -Original Message- From: Brian Lloyd [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 3:18 PM To: Jerry Flanders Cc: Bob McGwier; flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] differences between PSK31 demodulators On Jul 20, 2008, at 11:53 AM, Jerry Flanders wrote: At 02:28 PM 7/20/2008, Brian Lloyd wrote: SNIP If there ever was a compelling reason to use VAC, I missed it. Given its faults, why is VAC still being recommended? What else can replace it? I bought a lifetime supply of these for less than I paid for VAC: http://www.mpja.com/prodinfo.asp?number=15666+CB I understand what you are saying Jerry but I must reject it for philosophical reasons. There is no valid reason to have to convert back to the analog domain to solve this problem. That is just Rube Goldberg. Yes, it may work but it is just ... wrong. And yes, I am using that approach for now but there has to be a way to fix this properly. -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] differences between PSK31 demodulators
Hmmm. Seems like a recommendation of this sort should have been based on engineering considerations, not philosophical ones. My transmitted RTTY is now 100% garble-free. Is 90-95% good enough for everybody else? Jerry W4UK At 03:35 PM 7/20/2008, Bob McGwier wrote: We completely agree that you should not have to convert back to the analog domain. That is why we and VAC do NOT do it. ;-). Go read some more. Bob ARRL SDR Working Group Chair Member: ARRL, AMSAT, AMSAT-DL, TAPR, Packrats, NJQRP, QRP ARCI, QCWA, FRC. Trample the slow Hurdle the dead -Original Message- From: Brian Lloyd [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 3:18 PM To: Jerry Flanders Cc: Bob McGwier; flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] differences between PSK31 demodulators On Jul 20, 2008, at 11:53 AM, Jerry Flanders wrote: At 02:28 PM 7/20/2008, Brian Lloyd wrote: SNIP If there ever was a compelling reason to use VAC, I missed it. Given its faults, why is VAC still being recommended? What else can replace it? I bought a lifetime supply of these for less than I paid for VAC: http://www.mpja.com/prodinfo.asp?number=15666+CB I understand what you are saying Jerry but I must reject it for philosophical reasons. There is no valid reason to have to convert back to the analog domain to solve this problem. That is just Rube Goldberg. Yes, it may work but it is just ... wrong. And yes, I am using that approach for now but there has to be a way to fix this properly. -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] differences between PSK31 demodulators
On Jul 20, 2008, at 1:29 PM, Jerry Flanders wrote: Hmmm. Seems like a recommendation of this sort should have been based on engineering considerations, not philosophical ones. My transmitted RTTY is now 100% garble-free. Is 90-95% good enough for everybody else? I understand Jerry and I agree that if there is no other way to achieve error-free transmission and reception, your approach is the right one. OTOH, I can see no reason that the problem cannot be solved in the digital domain. As far as I know, there is no basic science or engineering that demands the intermediate conversion to the analog domain to solve this problem properly, hence my desire to attack this problem in the digital domain to see if I can solve it there. FWIW, my current hypothesis is that there is some high-priority process that is part of Windows that is causing a problem. My next attack on the problem will be to remove all unnecessary tasks from the standard out-of-the-box Windows XP task mix. For example, things like automatic software updates, NETBIOS, SMB file sharing, etc., are not necessary and consume resources unnecessarily. I am going to turn all those features off to see what the impact is on performance. I will post the results of my experiment. While my background is in software development and while I do have a lot of experience with real-time, event-driven OS's doing communications software (I used to design routers), I have no experience with making Windows work properly so I am shooting in the dark here. I invite anyone with experience in this area to advise me. Thank you. -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences betweenPSK31 demodulators)
I agree, when the system is treated as a monolithic black-box it is the only way one CAN address the problem (which means that, for most of us this is the only way to deal with the problem). OTOH, there are people with the tools to allow us to see inside the black-box. I couldn't agree more. The problem, however, is that there is not a group of people who, when taken together: a) Have the necessary domain-specific knowledge to solve the problem b) Have the time or inclination to solve it c) Can solve the problem for the general case, such that it will work on everybody's system... irrespective of the types of devices, drivers, and CPUs they're running. I would give large odds that the problem is one of some high-priority task stealing lots of cycles on a periodic basis or a scheduling issue between the threads of PowerSDR, VAC, and whatever other digital mode program one is running. Well, using the term task loosely, what you obviously must be correct: SOMEthing isn't getting to run when it needs to, and thus SOMEthing is getting discarded, overflowing, or otherwise buggering things up. If Flex called ME and asked me (given that I know something about Windows OS and I/O subsystem architecture) to help fix this problem, here's what I'd do: a) Sit down with the people who understand signal processing in PowerSDR and ask them what latency requirements they have, even an approximation would help. Try to find out how data moves through the system, and under what loads and conditions. Cuz, when it comes to signal processing, I know less than nothing. b) Pick ONE SYSTEM... with a specific set of peripherals and drivers and hold that constant. c) Take the necessary measurements to find the problem. Assuming you can find a suitable set of configuration parameters, publish the system information as THE Reference System. Cuz, if Flex could say Go out and buy a Dell XYZ, set it up with these parameters and you'll be happy I bet that's what a lot of people would do. I know *I* would. The only caveat is, given that reference system, neither the peripherals nor the software nor even the specific versions of the drivers on that system can change without the risk of significantly changing the system's behavior. I've solved problems like this in the past. Without getting into war stories, I worked with a client once who had an imaging device that could tolerate no more than 1ms latency. That, folks, is a LOT of latency. However, their device (controlled by a complex embedded Windows system) when working in production environments (not their lab, unfortunately) encountered a problem about once a day, always at a different time. Turned out, the problem was caused by combined interrupt and DPC latency created by a combination of their net card and the IDE controller handling a paging operation. In other words, it had nothing to do with their device or any of their image processing threads. We locked (pinned) their code in memory (making it non-pagable) and... the problem was solved. de Peter K1PGV ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences betweenPSK31 demodulators)
I've solved problems like this in the past. Without getting into war stories, I worked with a client once who had an imaging device that could tolerate no more than 1ms latency. That, folks, is a LOT of latency. However, their device (controlled by a complex embedded Windows system) when working in production environments (not their lab, unfortunately) encountered a problem about once a day, always at a different time. Turned out, the problem was caused by combined interrupt and DPC latency created by a combination of their net card and the IDE controller handling a paging operation. In other words, it had nothing to do with their device or any of their image processing threads. We locked (pinned) their code in memory (making it non-pagable) and... the problem was solved. So, not being One With The Microsoft Gestalt I would need help to learn how I would ensure that all the tasks (the things that gets scheduled to run by the process/task scheduler in the kernel) associated with PowerSDR, VAC, and MixW are locked in core and cannot be swapped? That seems like a very sensible thing to do anyway. -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream
Couple of minor hints that might help. One. Check out FreeRam XP Pro (http://www.yourwaresolutions.com). It can be configured to clean up all the leftover memory spaces not cleaned up when you exit various programs. Free. Two. Check your processes using Task Manager (ctrl-alt-del). Delete immediately AcroRd32.exe, my worst enemy. That's Adobe Reader left over from reading a PDF file on the Internet. Most of the time it won't go away automatically and if left sitting in memory will be guaranteed to lock you up at some point. Main reason I switched to FoxIt Reader. My laptop at work (Win2000) always loads up with pctspk.exe, a utility to add voice messages for various functions. Can't stop it from loading at startup so I kill whenever I boot up in the morning. It then gets immediately replaced by ReaderSL.exe, a speed loader for Adobe! Kill that too. I'm using an SDR1000/FA66 and running WinXP Home Media Edition, 968 Mb ram, 2.2 GHZ processor, about five years old. Computer usage with MixW and PowerSDR running is between 30 and 40%, but I watch what else I run when PowerSDR is running. As they say on the Red Green Show, we're all in this together. 73, Carl WC0V Brian Lloyd wrote: I've solved problems like this in the past. Without getting into war stories, I worked with a client once who had an imaging device that could tolerate no more than 1ms latency. That, folks, is a LOT of latency. However, their device (controlled by a complex embedded Windows system) when working in production environments (not their lab, unfortunately) encountered a problem about once a day, always at a different time. Turned out, the problem was caused by combined interrupt and DPC latency created by a combination of their net card and the IDE controller handling a paging operation. In other words, it had nothing to do with their device or any of their image processing threads. We locked (pinned) their code in memory (making it non-pagable) and... the problem was solved. So, not being One With The Microsoft Gestalt I would need help to learn how I would ensure that all the tasks (the things that gets scheduled to run by the process/task scheduler in the kernel) associated with PowerSDR, VAC, and MixW are locked in core and cannot be swapped? That seems like a very sensible thing to do anyway. -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences betweenPSK31 demodulators)
Hi guys! Brian, what model of Athlon X2 are you using? How much memory and what video card (sri if I missed this in a prior note)!. The very first thing to do is go to http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks2.htm and follow his XP tweaking advice. When it gets to the part about turning off Windows services, I would turn off the services listed in Level 2 and if you run into problems, make the services settings look like Level 1. Anything that requires you open Regedit, ignore. Second thing is to make sure your 1394a adapter isn't sharing an IRQ (interrupt) with any other bandwidth hogs like the USB controllers, the lan controllers or the video adapater. To do this go to the System control panel, select hardware manager and once its open, go to the view menu item and click on by connection. This will sort the list of devices by interrupt. Find your video card and see what else is sharing it. If one of the bandwidth hogs I mentioned are sharing with it, try moving it (or some of the other devices) to different slots. On my machine, it wants to share the IRQ with the Ultra Audio Adapter so I just disabled it in the device manager. One other thing (while you have the device manager open), make sure that the machine isn't trying to run TCP over the firewire port (its default for some reason). Disable the 1394 Network Connection (don't worry, it doesn't disable your firewire controller). I have a computer with a X2-4800 and 2GB of memory and have run mixw with the Flex-recommended values in VAC, at 96 Khz/1024 defined in the driver spec and 2048 in the DSP buffer size. I would start at that and if you see gaps in the waterfall (after doing the optimizations in tweakhound) try 4096 in the DSP buffer. The reason this can't be a recipe for everyone is that everyone's set their operating system differently, has their 1394a card sharing its IRQ with different devices, etc. Windows machines are the wild west when it comes to performance tuning (not even sure its an art). Let me know how this goes! Neal ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] rtty frequency display
I agree fully!!! I have requested this about 18 months ago. Originally I could get around this by setting both RIT and XIT to -2125 but a later SVN started clearing RIT when click tuning. Later I believe K5KDN added the CAT control option (RTTY Offset) so that at least contest/logging software would use the proper freq. There was talk of adding FSK which would then solve the problem but I'm sure that is off in the future. For those of us who use a lot of RTTY this is very confusing. Maybe if enough of us make the request, it will get moved up in priority. Either an option to disable the clearing of RIT or an options similar to the Click Tune Offsets is all that is required. A tool like Flex Profiler could manage the different required offset depending on mode. With this one exception, the rig is a perfect RTTY rig!! 73's Mark NU6X Sedona, AZ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Al Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 11:08 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] rtty frequency display Bob, I think that is the last piece that needs to be done to PSDR to make it operate RTTY the way that most users expect... I think RTTY should have been designed as a separate sub DIGI mode that acted exactly like CW is handled with respect to offset vs dial vs CAT ( except for TX ) .. Historically, RTTY operational techniques were derived from CW techniques. Suggest you enter an enhancement request on the Flex site... AL, K0VM Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2008 09:16:36 -0500 From: Robert Redmon [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Flexradio] rtty frequency display To: Flex Radio Reflector flexradio@flex-radio.biz Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Is there any way to get PowerSDR to display mark frequency rather than carrier frequency while in DIGL? Would certainly make RTTY operation easier. -- 73, Bob K5SM ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.138 / Virus Database: 270.5.3/1563 - Release Date: 7/20/2008 12:59 PM ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream
On Jul 20, 2008, at 3:04 PM, Carl Vangsness wrote: Couple of minor hints that might help. One. Check out FreeRam XP Pro (http://www.yourwaresolutions.com). It can be configured to clean up all the leftover memory spaces not cleaned up when you exit various programs. Free. Hmm, OK. Two. Check your processes using Task Manager (ctrl-alt-del). Delete immediately AcroRd32.exe, my worst enemy. That's Adobe Reader left over from reading a PDF file on the Internet. Most of the time it won't go away automatically and if left sitting in memory will be guaranteed to lock you up at some point. Main reason I switched to FoxIt Reader. Well, I started with a virgin XP 'Home' system, installed the stuff needed by the chipset on the MB, and then installed PowerSDR, VAC, and MixW. I don't have anything else on the system. My laptop at work (Win2000) always loads up with pctspk.exe, a utility to add voice messages for various functions. Can't stop it from loading at startup so I kill whenever I boot up in the morning. It then gets immediately replaced by ReaderSL.exe, a speed loader for Adobe! Kill that too. E. That's just ugly. Nothing should ever happen on the system without you asking for it first. I'm using an SDR1000/FA66 and running WinXP Home Media Edition, 968 Mb ram, 2.2 GHZ processor, about five years old. Computer usage with MixW and PowerSDR running is between 30 and 40%, but I watch what else I run when PowerSDR is running. As they say on the Red Green Show, we're all in this together. Yup. Working on chopping and channeling XP now. So far software updates and the firewall are gone as are the Microsoft network client, printer support, and QoS in the networking stack. Now I am using http://beemerworld.com/tips/servicesxp.htm as a guide as to what isn't needed and may be turned off. More later. -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream
I don't know if this will be helpful. In the SDR-1000 days we had a webpage with the collected wisdom from hundreds of guys for XP Optimization: http://www.n9vv.com/XP-optimization.html GL de Ken N9VV Brian Lloyd wrote: On Jul 20, 2008, at 3:04 PM, Carl Vangsness wrote: Couple of minor hints that might help. One. Check out FreeRam XP Pro (http://www.yourwaresolutions.com). It can be configured to clean up all the leftover memory spaces not cleaned up when you exit various programs. Free. Hmm, OK. Two. Check your processes using Task Manager (ctrl-alt-del). Delete immediately AcroRd32.exe, my worst enemy. That's Adobe Reader left over from reading a PDF file on the Internet. Most of the time it won't go away automatically and if left sitting in memory will be guaranteed to lock you up at some point. Main reason I switched to FoxIt Reader. Well, I started with a virgin XP 'Home' system, installed the stuff needed by the chipset on the MB, and then installed PowerSDR, VAC, and MixW. I don't have anything else on the system. My laptop at work (Win2000) always loads up with pctspk.exe, a utility to add voice messages for various functions. Can't stop it from loading at startup so I kill whenever I boot up in the morning. It then gets immediately replaced by ReaderSL.exe, a speed loader for Adobe! Kill that too. E. That's just ugly. Nothing should ever happen on the system without you asking for it first. I'm using an SDR1000/FA66 and running WinXP Home Media Edition, 968 Mb ram, 2.2 GHZ processor, about five years old. Computer usage with MixW and PowerSDR running is between 30 and 40%, but I watch what else I run when PowerSDR is running. As they say on the Red Green Show, we're all in this together. Yup. Working on chopping and channeling XP now. So far software updates and the firewall are gone as are the Microsoft network client, printer support, and QoS in the networking stack. Now I am using http://beemerworld.com/tips/servicesxp.htm as a guide as to what isn't needed and may be turned off. More later. -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] differences between PSK31 demodulators
On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 2:36 PM, Brian Lloyd [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: FWIW, my current hypothesis is that there is some high-priority process that is part of Windows that is causing a problem... The way this problem is addressed under Linux is by using the so-called rt version of the kernel, and running the audio subsystem at a higher priority than typical user processes, even though it's running mostly in user space. One reason this is possible is that the window system and many critical system functions also run in user space, even though they might be essentially owned by the system rather than any individual user. The consequence is that, even with a monolithic kernel, routine but high-priority system operations spend a minimal amount of time hogging the kernel. What seems to matter most is the order in which tasks at the same high-priority level are scheduled for service. As long as the audio subsystem gets scheduled often and gets a chance to do its little bit of work ahead of things like paging, journal updates, etc., the audio hums along happily. In any case, the problem doesn't come up in the Linux world at all, at this point. We have had zero problems of this sort since adopting the multimedia configuration guidelines established in UbuntuStudio. Lately I've been running the FireBox at 192k on a slow laptop with 512M, on a loaded system that normally fills out 1.5MB swap space, with nary a glitch in days. 73 Frank AB2KT -- Travelling by airplane in the US is nothing more than mass training of Americans to the requirements of the coming police state. The whole point is to make you learn to acquiesce without question, en masse, to completely absurd directives by dull functionaries wearing uniforms. -- Atrios ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences betweenPSK31 demodulators)
OK, I have done all the hacking on XP that I am comfortable with. I have cut the list of processes in half. No improvement. Actually, I did one thing that helped slightly: I gave processes in the background priority over foreground processes. That cut my dropout rate in half. And now it looks like Win2000 again. :-) -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences betweenPSK31 demodulators)
What processor/memory are you using?? Neal On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 7:38 PM, Brian Lloyd [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OK, I have done all the hacking on XP that I am comfortable with. I have cut the list of processes in half. No improvement. Actually, I did one thing that helped slightly: I gave processes in the background priority over foreground processes. That cut my dropout rate in half. And now it looks like Win2000 again. :-) -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ -- Neal Campbell Abroham Neal Software Programming Services for Windows, OS X and Linux (540) 242 0911 - Try Spot for OS X, the intelligent DXCluster Client at www.abrohamnealsoftware.com - introduction priced at $10.99 - For a great dog book, visit www.abrohamneal.com - See the FlexRadio Systems Flex-5000a in action at www.flex-videos.com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences betweenPSK31 demodulators)
On Jul 20, 2008, at 3:08 PM, Neal Campbell wrote: Hi guys! Brian, what model of Athlon X2 are you using? How much memory and what video card (sri if I missed this in a prior note)!. AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+, 2.01GHz, 1GB RAM. NVIDIA GeForce 6150 on the MB. The very first thing to do is go to http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks2.htm and follow his XP tweaking advice. When it gets to the part about turning off Windows services, I would turn off the services listed in Level 2 and if you run into problems, make the services settings look like Level 1. OK, did that. Set up for level-3. Pretty agressive. No change (as I have mentioned). Anything that requires you open Regedit, ignore. Sensible. Second thing is to make sure your 1394a adapter isn't sharing an IRQ (interrupt) with any other bandwidth hogs like the USB controllers, the lan controllers or the video adapater. To do this go to the System control panel, select hardware manager and once its open, go to the view menu item and click on by connection. This will sort the list of devices by interrupt. Find your video card and see what else is sharing it. If one of the bandwidth hogs I mentioned are sharing with it, try moving it (or some of the other devices) to different slots. On my machine, it wants to share the IRQ with the Ultra Audio Adapter so I just disabled it in the device manager. Well, that will be tough because I am only using the devices on the MB itself. There are no boards plugged into any of the PCI slots. One other thing (while you have the device manager open), make sure that the machine isn't trying to run TCP over the firewire port (its default for some reason). Disable the 1394 Network Connection (don't worry, it doesn't disable your firewire controller). Already done. I always disable that right off the bat on any system I am running. I have a computer with a X2-4800 and 2GB of memory and have run mixw with the Flex-recommended values in VAC, at 96 Khz/1024 defined in the driver spec and 2048 in the DSP buffer size. I would start at that and if you see gaps in the waterfall (after doing the optimizations in tweakhound) try 4096 in the DSP buffer. Already up to 2048 in the Flex-5000 control panel. DSP buffer size was already 4096. The reason this can't be a recipe for everyone is that everyone's set their operating system differently, has their 1394a card sharing its IRQ with different devices, etc. Windows machines are the wild west when it comes to performance tuning (not even sure its an art). Let me know how this goes! It didn't, at least not for MixW. Now it is time to try other programs to see if that has any effect. -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
[Flexradio] I must be doing something wrong
THIS IS A HAM ONLY computer but does connect to home network and to inet for cluster data. Right this minute, I have two different logging programs running. I have a cluster program that feeds cluster spots to both of the above programs I have called and worked some of those stations. dual monitors on a 3.2 Dell. PWSDR svn 2365 of W2RF RX2 test program. PWSDR reports cpu use at 32% I think I just heard a fraction of a hearbeat of dropped audio and no dropped audio when I was transmitting. DDTu is controlling all those com ports (takes 10 com ports to connect all this crap) via Com0Com and VAC 4.9. A few moments ago, I was on 30 cw with CWSkimmer via VAC decoding a full 192 bandwith of cw signals. Now I went to 30 PSK with a 5.0k bandwidth (that's as wide as WinWarbler can handle) and is decoding 15plus PSK signals. During the 30 meter PSK, I was not aware of any hiccups. During the 30 meter cw with CWSkimmer (it reported 6% cpu use) I did not hear any hiccups. So what am I doing wrong here? PWSDR Safe Mode Level 1 VAC buffer size of 412 sample rate 48000 Primare Audio buffer 2048 Sample Rate of 192000 DSP Buffers are all 4096/2048 for all 3 modes ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences betweenPSK31 demodulators)
That system is on the bottom end of what I would go with, especially with integrated video and 1GB of memory. The video is stealing system memory so I bet you have some memory swapping going on (which would also be shown as you got improvements by giving priority to the background functions). If you are locked on the x2 3800, go buy a video card asap. While there, buy another gig of memory. I am not sure if a separate firewire card would help but they are dirt cheap so it cannot hurt! Sorry to give you this advice but thats what I would advise. Neal On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 7:59 PM, Brian Lloyd [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jul 20, 2008, at 3:08 PM, Neal Campbell wrote: Hi guys! Brian, what model of Athlon X2 are you using? How much memory and what video card (sri if I missed this in a prior note)!. AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+, 2.01GHz, 1GB RAM. NVIDIA GeForce 6150 on the MB. The very first thing to do is go to http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks2.htm and follow his XP tweaking advice. When it gets to the part about turning off Windows services, I would turn off the services listed in Level 2 and if you run into problems, make the services settings look like Level 1. OK, did that. Set up for level-3. Pretty agressive. No change (as I have mentioned). Anything that requires you open Regedit, ignore. Sensible. Second thing is to make sure your 1394a adapter isn't sharing an IRQ (interrupt) with any other bandwidth hogs like the USB controllers, the lan controllers or the video adapater. To do this go to the System control panel, select hardware manager and once its open, go to the view menu item and click on by connection. This will sort the list of devices by interrupt. Find your video card and see what else is sharing it. If one of the bandwidth hogs I mentioned are sharing with it, try moving it (or some of the other devices) to different slots. On my machine, it wants to share the IRQ with the Ultra Audio Adapter so I just disabled it in the device manager. Well, that will be tough because I am only using the devices on the MB itself. There are no boards plugged into any of the PCI slots. One other thing (while you have the device manager open), make sure that the machine isn't trying to run TCP over the firewire port (its default for some reason). Disable the 1394 Network Connection (don't worry, it doesn't disable your firewire controller). Already done. I always disable that right off the bat on any system I am running. I have a computer with a X2-4800 and 2GB of memory and have run mixw with the Flex-recommended values in VAC, at 96 Khz/1024 defined in the driver spec and 2048 in the DSP buffer size. I would start at that and if you see gaps in the waterfall (after doing the optimizations in tweakhound) try 4096 in the DSP buffer. Already up to 2048 in the Flex-5000 control panel. DSP buffer size was already 4096. The reason this can't be a recipe for everyone is that everyone's set their operating system differently, has their 1394a card sharing its IRQ with different devices, etc. Windows machines are the wild west when it comes to performance tuning (not even sure its an art). Let me know how this goes! It didn't, at least not for MixW. Now it is time to try other programs to see if that has any effect. -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com -- Neal Campbell Abroham Neal Software Programming Services for Windows, OS X and Linux (540) 242 0911 - Try Spot for OS X, the intelligent DXCluster Client at www.abrohamnealsoftware.com - introduction priced at $10.99 - For a great dog book, visit www.abrohamneal.com - See the FlexRadio Systems Flex-5000a in action at www.flex-videos.com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences betweenPSK31 demodulators)
Well, that will be tough because I am only using the devices on the MB itself. There are no boards plugged into any of the PCI slots. AH HA! I am sure the mobo Firewire interface is your problem. There have been several glitching related issues that were resolved by *not* using the mobo Firewire interface. It usually shares too many other resources with other mobo embedded devices. I had to go to an external Firewire ExpressCard for my laptop because it would not work well at any sampling rate other than 48K. Now I can run at 96 or 128 K dropout free. Also, only run VAC at 48K (not to be confused with the audio sampling rate). You may need to tune you VAC channel parameters too, particularly the ms/int values. The following KB article can be very helpful in setting up MixW and VAC. HOWTO: How to Setup Virtual Audio Cable (VAC) 4.0x with PowerSDR (http://kb.flex-radio.com/article.aspx?id=10218) One other thing. In MixW, configure the audio processing method to DirectX. -Tim -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brian Lloyd Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 7:59 PM To: Neal Campbell Cc: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences betweenPSK31 demodulators) On Jul 20, 2008, at 3:08 PM, Neal Campbell wrote: Hi guys! Brian, what model of Athlon X2 are you using? How much memory and what video card (sri if I missed this in a prior note)!. AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+, 2.01GHz, 1GB RAM. NVIDIA GeForce 6150 on the MB. The very first thing to do is go to http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks2.htm and follow his XP tweaking advice. When it gets to the part about turning off Windows services, I would turn off the services listed in Level 2 and if you run into problems, make the services settings look like Level 1. OK, did that. Set up for level-3. Pretty agressive. No change (as I have mentioned). Anything that requires you open Regedit, ignore. Sensible. Second thing is to make sure your 1394a adapter isn't sharing an IRQ (interrupt) with any other bandwidth hogs like the USB controllers, the lan controllers or the video adapater. To do this go to the System control panel, select hardware manager and once its open, go to the view menu item and click on by connection. This will sort the list of devices by interrupt. Find your video card and see what else is sharing it. If one of the bandwidth hogs I mentioned are sharing with it, try moving it (or some of the other devices) to different slots. On my machine, it wants to share the IRQ with the Ultra Audio Adapter so I just disabled it in the device manager. Well, that will be tough because I am only using the devices on the MB itself. There are no boards plugged into any of the PCI slots. One other thing (while you have the device manager open), make sure that the machine isn't trying to run TCP over the firewire port (its default for some reason). Disable the 1394 Network Connection (don't worry, it doesn't disable your firewire controller). Already done. I always disable that right off the bat on any system I am running. I have a computer with a X2-4800 and 2GB of memory and have run mixw with the Flex-recommended values in VAC, at 96 Khz/1024 defined in the driver spec and 2048 in the DSP buffer size. I would start at that and if you see gaps in the waterfall (after doing the optimizations in tweakhound) try 4096 in the DSP buffer. Already up to 2048 in the Flex-5000 control panel. DSP buffer size was already 4096. The reason this can't be a recipe for everyone is that everyone's set their operating system differently, has their 1394a card sharing its IRQ with different devices, etc. Windows machines are the wild west when it comes to performance tuning (not even sure its an art). Let me know how this goes! It didn't, at least not for MixW. Now it is time to try other programs to see if that has any effect. -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] differences between PSK31 demodulators
What Frank suggests and what Brian suggested before: modify threading priorities, has been done for the audio threads in PowerSDR for, literally, years. All threads in PowerSDR can be run at real time through a setting in the Setup panel but this is not necessary since what we really care about is having the processing of audio threads be high, and not blocking their ability to run free, etc. We went through all of this when we had that silly metering thread at below normal priority able to grabbing a semaphore which blocked the sdr thread, way be in the early days. Now there may be another threading error still lurking. I will be happy to look at it later but may I suggest that in this group in particular one needs to take a lot of what is said here when it comes to the down near the metal internals of the code, with a mountain of salt. Eric Wachsmann and I spent literally weeks looking for any of the non-dsp threads in the GUI, etc. blocking the high priority threads. I doubt there is a lot of meat left on that bone but I could be wrong. Bob ARRL SDR Working Group Chair Member: ARRL, AMSAT, AMSAT-DL, TAPR, Packrats, NJQRP, QRP ARCI, QCWA, FRC. Trample the slow Hurdle the dead -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Frank Brickle Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 6:28 PM To: Brian Lloyd Cc: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] differences between PSK31 demodulators On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 2:36 PM, Brian Lloyd [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: FWIW, my current hypothesis is that there is some high-priority process that is part of Windows that is causing a problem... The way this problem is addressed under Linux is by using the so-called rt version of the kernel, and running the audio subsystem at a higher priority than typical user processes, even though it's running mostly in user space. One reason this is possible is that the window system and many critical system functions also run in user space, even though they might be essentially owned by the system rather than any individual user. The consequence is that, even with a monolithic kernel, routine but high-priority system operations spend a minimal amount of time hogging the kernel. What seems to matter most is the order in which tasks at the same high-priority level are scheduled for service. As long as the audio subsystem gets scheduled often and gets a chance to do its little bit of work ahead of things like paging, journal updates, etc., the audio hums along happily. In any case, the problem doesn't come up in the Linux world at all, at this point. We have had zero problems of this sort since adopting the multimedia configuration guidelines established in UbuntuStudio. Lately I've been running the FireBox at 192k on a slow laptop with 512M, on a loaded system that normally fills out 1.5MB swap space, with nary a glitch in days. 73 Frank AB2KT -- Travelling by airplane in the US is nothing more than mass training of Americans to the requirements of the coming police state. The whole point is to make you learn to acquiesce without question, en masse, to completely absurd directives by dull functionaries wearing uniforms. -- Atrios ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences betweenPSK31 demodulators)
On Jul 20, 2008, at 5:29 PM, Neal Campbell wrote: That system is on the bottom end of what I would go with, especially with integrated video and 1GB of memory. The video is stealing system memory 32M so I bet you have some memory swapping going on (which would also be shown as you got improvements by giving priority to the background functions). Swapping with a gig with only PowerSDR, VAC, and MixW running? This boggles my mind. If you are locked on the x2 3800, I am not locked into running anything in particular. It was a machine slated to run solaris to be a file server and I pressed it into service to run windows in order to try out the '5K. go buy a video card asap. I have several kicking around but they are pretty old and stupid. While there, buy another gig of memory. I am not sure if a separate firewire card would help but they are dirt cheap so it cannot hurt! I fail to see why another firewire card would be better than the one on the MB. I don't know how the one on the MB is interfaced but it certainly can't be any worse than plugging something in the PCI bus. Regardless, I have another firewire card kicking around if I want to use it. Sorry to give you this advice but thats what I would advise. shaking head This is just crazy. -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
[Flexradio] Fan Noise made Irrelevant
Fan Noise made irrelevant may sound like wishful thinking. But, mine effected me only on transmit since I use head phones. My Heil C5 mic picked up the sound of all fans and any other noise in the house. All seems well after I tinkered with the PA Gain Settings. My problem was that I had my mic gain turned up too high to try and get near 100 Watts out on SSB. I noticed that after calibrating, the PA the gain was set at 52.6 on 80 MTRs. When I finally moved it down to 50.0, the power out increased to 123 Watts. I then reduced my mic gain by 20 % (from 55 to 45) to get the SSB transmit Wattage to read just under 100 Watts. The net results was that my Heil C5 mic no longer picked up fan noise from the SDR1000, no Linear noise or even A/C noise as well. Contacts confirm that my 'shack noise' is totally gone and the audio is still outstanding. ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences betweenPSK31 demodulators)
Sri, tried my best! GL Neal On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 10:50 PM, Brian Lloyd [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jul 20, 2008, at 5:29 PM, Neal Campbell wrote: That system is on the bottom end of what I would go with, especially with integrated video and 1GB of memory. The video is stealing system memory 32M so I bet you have some memory swapping going on (which would also be shown as you got improvements by giving priority to the background functions). Swapping with a gig with only PowerSDR, VAC, and MixW running? This boggles my mind. If you are locked on the x2 3800, I am not locked into running anything in particular. It was a machine slated to run solaris to be a file server and I pressed it into service to run windows in order to try out the '5K. go buy a video card asap. I have several kicking around but they are pretty old and stupid. While there, buy another gig of memory. I am not sure if a separate firewire card would help but they are dirt cheap so it cannot hurt! I fail to see why another firewire card would be better than the one on the MB. I don't know how the one on the MB is interfaced but it certainly can't be any worse than plugging something in the PCI bus. Regardless, I have another firewire card kicking around if I want to use it. Sorry to give you this advice but thats what I would advise. shaking head This is just crazy. -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com -- Neal Campbell Abroham Neal Software Programming Services for Windows, OS X and Linux (540) 242 0911 - Try Spot for OS X, the intelligent DXCluster Client at www.abrohamnealsoftware.com - introduction priced at $10.99 - For a great dog book, visit www.abrohamneal.com - See the FlexRadio Systems Flex-5000a in action at www.flex-videos.com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Fan Noise made Irrelevant
Gerald Capodieci wrote: Fan Noise made irrelevant may sound like wishful thinking. But, mine effected me only on transmit since I use head phones. My Heil C5 mic picked up the sound of all fans and any other noise in the house. All seems well after I tinkered with the PA Gain Settings. My problem was that I had my mic gain turned up too high to try and get near 100 Watts out on SSB. I noticed that after calibrating, the PA the gain was set at 52.6 on 80 MTRs. When I finally moved it down to 50.0, the power out increased to 123 Watts. I then reduced my mic gain by 20 % (from 55 to 45) to get the SSB transmit Wattage to read just under 100 Watts. The net results was that my Heil C5 mic no longer picked up fan noise from the SDR1000, no Linear noise or even A/C noise as well. Contacts confirm that my 'shack noise' is totally gone and the audio is still outstanding. ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ Your mike gain at 45 is still probably too high with a Heil C5. You should set it for 0dBm on voice peaks. I use a PR40 and my mic gain is set to 10. Also, enabling and setting the noise gate can eliminate most ambient shack noise. Chuck AA5J ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences betweenPSK31 demodulators)
Brian, Tim is right, about 50% of the on board FireWire ports are unusable due to IRQ conflicts the other devices. Motherboard manufacturers classify the FW as if it was just another USB port, then combine both with the video and even with the MB chipset.. May or may not be the issue, but a good 1394a FireWire control is about $20 to $30 .. Also make sure that you are running Safe Mode 1 in Operational Mode and a buffer of 1024 or 2048.. But since your external seems to be running ok, it might also be a VAC buffer conflict. Just make sure the VAC buffer is 512 or 1024 and sample of 48000. Then in the VAC control panel , might need to increase the Ms per interrupt. With all the different HW and SW configurations, it is hard sometimes to make all this work.Any time you start to approach the 40% cpu usage rate, a realtime device like the Flex may drop a bit here and there.. And VAC 4.09 does not take much for CPU cycles and just runs in the background, once everything is happy, you will forget it's there.. One other thing, if you think that PowerSDR needs more CPU time, just move the Process Priority of PowerSDR in the Options menu to Real-Time, then it gets moved to the front of the pack most of the time... 73, Dudley WA5QPZ Tim Ellison wrote: Well, that will be tough because I am only using the devices on the MB itself. There are no boards plugged into any of the PCI slots. AH HA! I am sure the mobo Firewire interface is your problem. There have been several glitching related issues that were resolved by *not* using the mobo Firewire interface. It usually shares too many other resources with other mobo embedded devices. I had to go to an external Firewire ExpressCard for my laptop because it would not work well at any sampling rate other than 48K. Now I can run at 96 or 128 K dropout free. Also, only run VAC at 48K (not to be confused with the audio sampling rate). You may need to tune you VAC channel parameters too, particularly the ms/int values. The following KB article can be very helpful in setting up MixW and VAC. HOWTO: How to Setup Virtual Audio Cable (VAC) 4.0x with PowerSDR (http://kb.flex-radio.com/article.aspx?id=10218) One other thing. In MixW, configure the audio processing method to DirectX. -Tim -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brian Lloyd Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 7:59 PM To: Neal Campbell Cc: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences betweenPSK31 demodulators) On Jul 20, 2008, at 3:08 PM, Neal Campbell wrote: Hi guys! Brian, what model of Athlon X2 are you using? How much memory and what video card (sri if I missed this in a prior note)!. AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+, 2.01GHz, 1GB RAM. NVIDIA GeForce 6150 on the MB. The very first thing to do is go to http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks2.htm and follow his XP tweaking advice. When it gets to the part about turning off Windows services, I would turn off the services listed in Level 2 and if you run into problems, make the services settings look like Level 1. OK, did that. Set up for level-3. Pretty agressive. No change (as I have mentioned). Anything that requires you open Regedit, ignore. Sensible. Second thing is to make sure your 1394a adapter isn't sharing an IRQ (interrupt) with any other bandwidth hogs like the USB controllers, the lan controllers or the video adapater. To do this go to the System control panel, select hardware manager and once its open, go to the view menu item and click on by connection. This will sort the list of devices by interrupt. Find your video card and see what else is sharing it. If one of the bandwidth hogs I mentioned are sharing with it, try moving it (or some of the other devices) to different slots. On my machine, it wants to share the IRQ with the Ultra Audio Adapter so I just disabled it in the device manager. Well, that will be tough because I am only using the devices on the MB itself. There are no boards plugged into any of the PCI slots. One other thing (while you have the device manager open), make sure that the machine isn't trying to run TCP over the firewire port (its default for some reason). Disable the 1394 Network Connection (don't worry, it doesn't disable your firewire controller). Already done. I always disable that right off the bat on any system I am running. I have a computer with a X2-4800 and 2GB of memory and have run mixw with the Flex-recommended values in VAC, at 96 Khz/1024 defined in the driver spec and 2048 in the DSP buffer size. I would start at that and if you see gaps in the waterfall (after doing the optimizations in tweakhound) try 4096 in the DSP buffer. Already up to 2048 in the Flex-5000 control panel. DSP buffer size was
Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences betweenPSK31 demodulators)
On Jul 20, 2008, at 6:24 PM, Tim Ellison wrote: Well, that will be tough because I am only using the devices on the MB itself. There are no boards plugged into any of the PCI slots. AH HA! I am sure the mobo Firewire interface is your problem. Perhaps. There have been several glitching related issues that were resolved by *not* using the mobo Firewire interface. It usually shares too many other resources with other mobo embedded devices. I had to go to an external Firewire ExpressCard for my laptop because it would not work well at any sampling rate other than 48K. Now I can run at 96 or 128 K dropout free. You do understand that the dropouts are on the VAC link to MixW, not between PowerSDR and the '5K. I am having no problems with FireWire comm to the '5K itself. Even with VAC and MixW running PowerSDR does not show any bad behavior and the analog line-out signal to my Mac is error-free. Also, only run VAC at 48K (not to be confused with the audio sampling rate). I am running the VAC link at 12Ksps. You may need to tune you VAC channel parameters too, particularly the ms/int values. Varying ms/int over the range of 5-15 didn't seem to have any effect either way. The following KB article can be very helpful in setting up MixW and VAC. HOWTO: How to Setup Virtual Audio Cable (VAC) 4.0x with PowerSDR (http://kb.flex-radio.com/article.aspx?id=10218) One other thing. In MixW, configure the audio processing method to DirectX. Interesting. If anything the dropout rate is higher when I do that but it is something else to try. Still, no luck. Thank you for the ideas. -Tim -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ] On Behalf Of Brian Lloyd Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 7:59 PM To: Neal Campbell Cc: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences betweenPSK31 demodulators) On Jul 20, 2008, at 3:08 PM, Neal Campbell wrote: Hi guys! Brian, what model of Athlon X2 are you using? How much memory and what video card (sri if I missed this in a prior note)!. AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+, 2.01GHz, 1GB RAM. NVIDIA GeForce 6150 on the MB. The very first thing to do is go to http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks2.htm and follow his XP tweaking advice. When it gets to the part about turning off Windows services, I would turn off the services listed in Level 2 and if you run into problems, make the services settings look like Level 1. OK, did that. Set up for level-3. Pretty agressive. No change (as I have mentioned). Anything that requires you open Regedit, ignore. Sensible. Second thing is to make sure your 1394a adapter isn't sharing an IRQ (interrupt) with any other bandwidth hogs like the USB controllers, the lan controllers or the video adapater. To do this go to the System control panel, select hardware manager and once its open, go to the view menu item and click on by connection. This will sort the list of devices by interrupt. Find your video card and see what else is sharing it. If one of the bandwidth hogs I mentioned are sharing with it, try moving it (or some of the other devices) to different slots. On my machine, it wants to share the IRQ with the Ultra Audio Adapter so I just disabled it in the device manager. Well, that will be tough because I am only using the devices on the MB itself. There are no boards plugged into any of the PCI slots. One other thing (while you have the device manager open), make sure that the machine isn't trying to run TCP over the firewire port (its default for some reason). Disable the 1394 Network Connection (don't worry, it doesn't disable your firewire controller). Already done. I always disable that right off the bat on any system I am running. I have a computer with a X2-4800 and 2GB of memory and have run mixw with the Flex-recommended values in VAC, at 96 Khz/1024 defined in the driver spec and 2048 in the DSP buffer size. I would start at that and if you see gaps in the waterfall (after doing the optimizations in tweakhound) try 4096 in the DSP buffer. Already up to 2048 in the Flex-5000 control panel. DSP buffer size was already 4096. The reason this can't be a recipe for everyone is that everyone's set their operating system differently, has their 1394a card sharing its IRQ with different devices, etc. Windows machines are the wild west when it comes to performance tuning (not even sure its an art). Let me know how this goes! It didn't, at least not for MixW. Now it is time to try other programs to see if that has any effect. -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives:
Re: [Flexradio] differences between PSK31 demodulators
On Jul 20, 2008, at 6:35 PM, Bob McGwier wrote: What Frank suggests and what Brian suggested before: modify threading priorities, has been done for the audio threads in PowerSDR for, literally, years. All threads in PowerSDR can be run at real time through a setting in the Setup panel but this is not necessary since what we really care about is having the processing of audio threads be high, and not blocking their ability to run free, etc. We went through all of this when we had that silly metering thread at below normal priority able to grabbing a semaphore which blocked the sdr thread, way be in the early days. Now there may be another threading error still lurking. I will be happy to look at it later but may I suggest that in this group in particular one needs to take a lot of what is said here when it comes to the down near the metal internals of the code, with a mountain of salt. Eric Wachsmann and I spent literally weeks looking for any of the non-dsp threads in the GUI, etc. blocking the high priority threads. I doubt there is a lot of meat left on that bone but I could be wrong. What you say makes a great deal of sense. I am not seeing any problems with PowerSDR itself. The problem appears to be with VAC. -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences betweenPSK31 demodulators)
On Jul 20, 2008, at 8:04 PM, Neal Campbell wrote: Sri, tried my best! Thank you. I appreciate it. GL Neal On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 10:50 PM, Brian Lloyd brian- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jul 20, 2008, at 5:29 PM, Neal Campbell wrote: That system is on the bottom end of what I would go with, especially with integrated video and 1GB of memory. The video is stealing system memory 32M so I bet you have some memory swapping going on (which would also be shown as you got improvements by giving priority to the background functions). Swapping with a gig with only PowerSDR, VAC, and MixW running? This boggles my mind. If you are locked on the x2 3800, I am not locked into running anything in particular. It was a machine slated to run solaris to be a file server and I pressed it into service to run windows in order to try out the '5K. go buy a video card asap. I have several kicking around but they are pretty old and stupid. While there, buy another gig of memory. I am not sure if a separate firewire card would help but they are dirt cheap so it cannot hurt! I fail to see why another firewire card would be better than the one on the MB. I don't know how the one on the MB is interfaced but it certainly can't be any worse than plugging something in the PCI bus. Regardless, I have another firewire card kicking around if I want to use it. Sorry to give you this advice but thats what I would advise. shaking head This is just crazy. -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com -- Neal Campbell Abroham Neal Software Programming Services for Windows, OS X and Linux (540) 242 0911 - Try Spot for OS X, the intelligent DXCluster Client at www.abrohamnealsoftware.com - introduction priced at $10.99 - For a great dog book, visit www.abrohamneal.com - See the FlexRadio Systems Flex-5000a in action at www.flex-videos.com -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences betweenPSK31 demodulators)
On Jul 20, 2008, at 9:06 PM, Dudley Hurry wrote: Brian, Tim is right, about 50% of the on board FireWire ports are unusable due to IRQ conflicts the other devices. Motherboard manufacturers classify the FW as if it was just another USB port, then combine both with the video and even with the MB chipset.. May or may not be the issue, but a good 1394a FireWire control is about $20 to $30 .. Also make sure that you are running Safe Mode 1 in Operational Mode and a buffer of 1024 or 2048.. But since your external seems to be running ok, it might also be a VAC buffer conflict. Just make sure the VAC buffer is 512 or 1024 and sample of 48000. Then in the VAC control panel , might need to increase the Ms per interrupt. I have tried that to no avail. Hmmm, I dropped the sampling rate on the link to MixW through VAC to 12000 sps. I figured that the lower sampling rate would give more time to keep the buffers full. Please correct me if I would be better off to increase the sample rate. With all the different HW and SW configurations, it is hard sometimes to make all this work.Any time you start to approach the 40% cpu usage rate, a realtime device like the Flex may drop a bit here and there.. Well, my CPU usage is 13% peaking to 20%. I don't think I am starved for CPU cycles. And VAC 4.09 does not take much for CPU cycles and just runs in the background, once everything is happy, you will forget it's there.. One other thing, if you think that PowerSDR needs more CPU time, just move the Process Priority of PowerSDR in the Options menu to Real-Time, then it gets moved to the front of the pack most of the time... Well, the problem does not seem to be with PowerSDR but we are dealing with a complex set of cooperative applications. 73, Dudley WA5QPZ Tim Ellison wrote: Well, that will be tough because I am only using the devices on the MB itself. There are no boards plugged into any of the PCI slots. AH HA! I am sure the mobo Firewire interface is your problem. There have been several glitching related issues that were resolved by *not* using the mobo Firewire interface. It usually shares too many other resources with other mobo embedded devices. I had to go to an external Firewire ExpressCard for my laptop because it would not work well at any sampling rate other than 48K. Now I can run at 96 or 128 K dropout free. Also, only run VAC at 48K (not to be confused with the audio sampling rate). You may need to tune you VAC channel parameters too, particularly the ms/int values. The following KB article can be very helpful in setting up MixW and VAC. HOWTO: How to Setup Virtual Audio Cable (VAC) 4.0x with PowerSDR (http://kb.flex-radio.com/article.aspx?id=10218) One other thing. In MixW, configure the audio processing method to DirectX. -Tim -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ] On Behalf Of Brian Lloyd Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 7:59 PM To: Neal Campbell Cc: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences betweenPSK31 demodulators) On Jul 20, 2008, at 3:08 PM, Neal Campbell wrote: Hi guys! Brian, what model of Athlon X2 are you using? How much memory and what video card (sri if I missed this in a prior note)!. AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+, 2.01GHz, 1GB RAM. NVIDIA GeForce 6150 on the MB. The very first thing to do is go to http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks2.htm and follow his XP tweaking advice. When it gets to the part about turning off Windows services, I would turn off the services listed in Level 2 and if you run into problems, make the services settings look like Level 1. OK, did that. Set up for level-3. Pretty agressive. No change (as I have mentioned). Anything that requires you open Regedit, ignore. Sensible. Second thing is to make sure your 1394a adapter isn't sharing an IRQ (interrupt) with any other bandwidth hogs like the USB controllers, the lan controllers or the video adapater. To do this go to the System control panel, select hardware manager and once its open, go to the view menu item and click on by connection. This will sort the list of devices by interrupt. Find your video card and see what else is sharing it. If one of the bandwidth hogs I mentioned are sharing with it, try moving it (or some of the other devices) to different slots. On my machine, it wants to share the IRQ with the Ultra Audio Adapter so I just disabled it in the device manager. Well, that will be tough because I am only using the devices on the MB itself. There are no boards plugged into any of the PCI slots. One other thing (while you have the device manager open), make sure that the machine isn't trying to run TCP over the firewire port (its default for some reason). Disable the
Re: [Flexradio] New PS. Switching or not?
Hi, my experience is that switching power supplies are much better than their reputation as reflected here in the comments of the last days. I am using switching supplies within my self-assembled computer (build-in in the housing SilvStone LC11), at 13.8V for the F5k (Manson SPS9600), in addition two ones in my homemade MosFET linear one at 12V and another one at 48V (SCP-1k2-48) the latter delivering 1.2 kW output. So far I don't see any problems. A quarter century ago with the technology of these days I had problems and found birdies every 40 kHz even within the 2 m band and replaced the switching supply of the transverter by an analog controlled one, however, with modern ones, ... see before. Hans, DL2MDQ. Lee Mushel schrieb: Well, guys, I try to use reflector comments to give me a heads up whenever possible. As soon as I placed my order for the 5000A last spring I immediately started to think about the power supply and had decided that I wanted an old fashioned supply. After some time I found a Hewlett Packard 6200 series on eBay with remote sensing, good regulation and ripple specs and I suspected a monster transformer and capacitor bank. I was right! After the recent comments I ordered a one farad capacitor which arrived last week, went into the junk box and found a mercury wetted contactor to short out the start up resistor so I can turn things off and on without too much worry. So now I can sit back and read the current comments without worry! Cooling and shielding are other areas that I've tried to pay close attention to. I won't comment on those, though, since Gerald, Eric and Tim might get excited! The XYL calls this sort of thing Another Of Your Overdone Projects. 73 Lee K9WRU - Original Message - From: Neal Campbell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: FireBrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: FlexRadio List flexradio@flex-radio.biz Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 7:50 AM Subject: Re: [Flexradio] New PS. Switching or not? I would definitely go non-switching but just a reminder: You are already using switching power supply in your shack and often it is of the cheapest quality known to man: in you PC. I honestly believe that people should think putting in a high-quality pc power supply. Unfortunately a non-switching pc ps doesn't exist (to my knowledge). Neal On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 6:51 AM, FireBrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I used my Astron 50amp big heavy power supply. It may be overkill but it's solid. good luck I prefer non switching. But QST had a review of switching ps a while back. You should be able to find that review online. I think you want the supply that creates the least noise. Some switching supplies are much better than others. good luck On 7/20/2008 3:44:12 AM, Ruben Navarro Huedo ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Hello friends: I have to buy a new power supply for my 5000a. What is your advice? Switching or not switching ps ? TNX a lot. -- Rubén Navarro Huedo http://www.palotes.com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio. com/ ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ -- Neal Campbell Abroham Neal Software Programming Services for Windows, OS X and Linux (540) 242 0911 - Try Spot for OS X, the intelligent DXCluster Client at www.abrohamnealsoftware.com - introduction priced at $10.99 - For a great dog book, visit www.abrohamneal.com - See the FlexRadio Systems Flex-5000a in action at www.flex-videos.com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ . ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] Dropouts in VAC stream (was: differences betweenPSK31 demodulators)
On Jul 20, 2008, at 9:06 PM, Dudley Hurry wrote: Brian, Tim is right, about 50% of the on board FireWire ports are unusable due to IRQ conflicts the other devices. Motherboard manufacturers classify the FW as if it was just another USB port, then combine both with the video and even with the MB chipset.. May or may not be the issue, but a good 1394a FireWire control is about $20 to $30 .. OK, I have added a TI OHCI compliant IEEE 1394 host adaptor and the '5K is now connected through that. No apparent difference in performance so far. (PowerSDR and '5K running OK.) Also make sure that you are running Safe Mode 1 in Operational Mode and a buffer of 1024 or 2048.. I am running safe mode 1 and a buffer size of 2048. But since your external seems to be running ok, it might also be a VAC buffer conflict. Just make sure the VAC buffer is 512 or 1024 and sample of 48000. Then in the VAC control panel , might need to increase the Ms per interrupt. I have increased the sample rate to VAC from 12Ksps to 48Ksps. I have set the buffer size to 1024. I have increase ms/int to 15. Unfortunately there are no sigs I can find to decode at this point so I will have to wait to see. I still see what appear to be dropouts on the MixW waterfall display. With all the different HW and SW configurations, it is hard sometimes to make all this work.Any time you start to approach the 40% cpu usage rate, a realtime device like the Flex may drop a bit here and there.. Well, I think I said before that my CPU utilization as reported by PowerSDR is 13% peaking to 20%. And VAC 4.09 does not take much for CPU cycles and just runs in the background, once everything is happy, you will forget it's there.. Hopefully! One other thing, if you think that PowerSDR needs more CPU time, just move the Process Priority of PowerSDR in the Options menu to Real-Time, then it gets moved to the front of the pack most of the time... So far nothing leads me to think that this is a problem. And I will get a video card tomorrow and try that. I want to thank everyone for their assistance today. I apologize for appearing testy. I am just trying to understand the issues so that I can make a stab at solving these problems myself in the future. -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
