Remote Rig
RRC 1258 Support in English => Configuration, RRC 1258 => Topic started by: oh2xx on 2013-10-14, 18:17:12
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Hi,
I tried to configure the Control-RRC to use USB for Winkey to solve my other CW keying issues. Unfortunately I did not see the COMFSK-driver in Windows Device Manager so I reinstalled the Microbit setup manager. After that some new COM-ports appeared: RRC1258 COM0 (COM13), RRC1258 COM1 (COM14), RRC1258 COMExtra (COM15). I already had Microbit RRC VIrtual Comport (COM12) and Microbit RRCMicro (COM4) there. But still no USB-COMFSK driver listed.
I thought that maybe the COMExtra is a "new" USB-COMFSK but did not get it to work either.
I also set COM1 Mode to "Winkeyer" and set "Use USB Com Port as COM1"=YES to test both "RRC1258 COM0 (COM6)" and RRC1258 COM1 (COM7) but Winkeyer was not found.
I have a K3 twin setup if that matters. Any ideas?
73 de Kari, OH2XX
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Im not an expert in the portdrivers so I will not say anything about that.
Yes COM3 mode (USB-COMFSK) was introduced to get a separate port for Winkeyer or RTTY functions so you do not have to use one of the transfer ports for communication with the local RRC. The winkeyer function should work on both the separate port com3 and also com1 and 2 and should be enabled the way you describe.
What do mean by Winkeyer was not found ?, Do you mean that the logpogram cannot send CW via the port ?
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What do mean by Winkeyer was not found ?, Do you mean that the logpogram cannot send CW via the port ?
The logprogram (DX4WIN) does not detect the Winkey. I assume that it tries to open the com port for Winkey and it fails. I have a local winkey on a different com port and it works ok. I also tested the RRC com ports with WKDemo (http://www.k1el.com/) and it was not able to open the com port for Winkey either. The error message says: "Please check com port settings"
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Ok
I tested here with the freeware UA9OV CwType, and works. I used RRC com1 set in mode 8 =Winkey and baudrate =1200. Im not sure if the message you get is beacuse TX4WIN don't find the port or if it can't communicate. You can test with UA9OV CwType to see what happens
73 de mike
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Tried with UA9OV CWType and the error message is: "Winkey does not answer". Another message I received was "Writing to WinKey port error!" - that came from the COM3 mode (USB-COMFSK). If I unplug the USB cable then the error message is "COM-port open error".
I tried also the RS232 COM1 connector in the front using a USB-Serial converter - did not work either.
4 hours of testing different configurations today and I am not getting anywhere. But this is a hobby ;-) I would like to find a solution though.
73 de Kari
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It took me 5 minutes to confirm that it's OK. Did you set baudrate to 1200 baud?
Mike
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Yes, this should be trivial...
Baud rate was set to 1200. I noticed that there was a conflit between MicroHAM virtual COM ports and RRC virtual COM ports as microHAM router did not launch if I had RRC connected. I reinstalled the Setup manager once more without launching microHAM but that did not help either.
I am sure that the solution is simple in the end - just have to find the root problem...
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Seems you should try to manually uninstall as many of your serial ports as possible. You may have to use "Show hidden devices" in the Device Manager in order to see them and then uninstall them as you have some kind of conflict among the serial ports going on. Once you have gotten rid of them you could install them in "steps" and see that they work as you add more and more of them.
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I took my wife's laptop and installed virtual com ports there. Still no luck. Flashed RRC - no affect. It is time for a short break now.
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Kari,
If you are home tomorrow during the day, I can take a look using Teamviewer. I usually can fix these things.
You can drop me a mail at dj0qn (at) darc.de if you want.
73,
Mitch DJ0QN / K7DX
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Kari,
You said that you are not able to get it to work using the RS232 COM1 connector in the front either. That indicates there is something else going on which prevents it from working. If the front COM1 had worked but not the USB COM ports then suspecting the USB COM ports as having some kind of trouble would have been logical.
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I went into Kari's PC:
- I cleaned the USB ports out
- I reconfigured his control RRC to use COM3 as Winkeyer over USB and changed COM1 to inactive
- His radio RRC is configured correctly
I no longer had the old problem where the USB port was blocked, but now it says that the Winkeyer
does not respond. I am at a loss as to what is causing this problem. I have never seen Kari's CW program
before, perhaps there is a compatibility problem between it and the RRC Winkeyer emulation.
73,
Mitch DJ0QN / K7DX
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Thanks to Mitch for having a look at my configuration.
The CW program Mitch refers to is "UA9OV CWType". It works ok for my local Winkey (microHAM) and it is the one Jan used in his test setup.
I went over to OH1JT's PC and tried to configure his RRC Winkey both via RRC COMExtra and RRC COM1. Did not get it to work there either.
The FW revision we both use is the latest and Jan must have had that one too so I am totally lost here.
73 de Kari
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Just a clarification: It was Mike who did the keyer test, not me.
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Solved!
I installed the old USB Com drivers (with Setup manager v1.17) and now the Winkey works.
73 de Kari
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What?! Are you still talking about the USB ports in the RRC? I am asking since those drivers have not changed a bit since the first version of Setup Manager as they actually are provided by Windows itself. The only difference is that we have added signing to the so called INF files which is used to link Windows's driver with the RRC's port making it possible to install on Win 7/8 64 bits without bypassing the driver signing requirement.
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I am talking about the USB drivers that come along with the setup manager installation package.
E.g. I can see that the name for "RRC1258 COMExtra" has now changed to "RRC1258 COMFSK" in device manager after downgrading.
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I had to check what more could be the explanation to this strange behavior and found out that there have been a couple of changes made to the INF files besides the signing, changes which Microsoft recommends to make sure the USB COM port driver they provide is installed and found on every type of Windows. (As I said, we do not deliver a "driver" since the driver in question belongs to Windows itself, we only provide a file which tells Windows that we want it to use its driver with the RRC).
If now in fact those changes instead have made the system unstable and not working as good as before then it is truly nuts! We will certainly have to look into this!
Thank you for your help and patience!
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After digging deep into this I still can't see why the changes we did to the INF files as per Microsoft's recommendations could break the functionality like described in this thread. It is like there is not only the possibility for a device to fail installation but also to install successfully yet not work, or at least only work partially.
Unfortunately we do not have computers showing such behavior here at Microbit, which makes debugging hard. If I try altering the INF files would it be possible that you Kari do some testing to see what happens?
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I have done a few more attempts/tests but still I fail to find any difference between the old INF files and the new ones. The ports are installed and works. Very strange...