Two weeks ago Mom reached into the cookie jar and pulled out $2500
and said "Merry Xmas! This is to buy a new confuser to replace the old
confuser, you know the one that takes 3 minutes to log the qso when
you get up to about 1500 contacts in the DX contest." Well I know that
you went for it. You grabbed the phone and placed the order.
It is now 11 days later and the UPS truck just came to a smoking stop
in your driveway. The driver is approaching the front door carrying two
huge cartons. He will surely have a hernia after this delivery. You quickly
open carton #1. I know you went for the BIG monitor (well after the family
gets a view of this gem you just may have to buy them a BIG screen TV).
You open carton #2. Out comes an Ivory Tower that contains the speedy
P5 processor, a floppy drive, a BIG hard drive, and the Super-Duper
Fast-Track 1000-Dynamite video accelerator card for Windows. This video
card has 2 meg of memory on it! That is more memory than the old confuser
has! Maybe it is more memory than I have!! WOW! I am THERE! LET"S
CONTEST!
OK people it is now time to hold the phone. This W3MM guy is going
to rain on my parade, I just know it! Here forthwith is what has taken
place. A very big company (The Big Blue) wrote a standard for the current
video cards. Basically what the standard says is that the video card will
use the COM4 address. Well all the video card manufacturers have
subscribed to this standard. Notice I did not say anything about an IRQ.
What is this goof trying to tell me? What I am saying is that the video
card owns the COM4 address and it will not share it with any other device.
This means that the COM4 address is not available to you in your contest
computer. DUH? You can't use COM4!
Can I get around this problem? Yes you can but I am not going to get
into it until the next discussion which will be about serial ports. I can't
wait, what can I do? Read on.
For those of you that are PacketCluster sysops you know that there
are never enough available serial ports. You don't need a fancy video
card for a node. I yanked the fast card out of my node computer. I drove
to the biggest computer store in the area and told the salesman that
I wanted the most basic VGA video card that is made by man. He sold
me an STB Systems MACH-512. The following appears in the hardware
specifications for this video card: I/O Address 3B0H-3DFH, DMA No
DMA channels exist, Interrupt No interrupts are used. Well this solved
the W3MM node problem. I am running 5 serial ports.
OK. The next discussion will be on serial ports and how you can get around
the video card grabbing a primo com port. This will take me a day of testing
a new serial port card to make sure that I have flogged it to death before I
recommend it to anyone.
VY 73 de Dave W3MM w3mm@aol.com
>From btippett@ctc.net (Bill Tippett) Sat Dec 9 06:38:55 1995
From: btippett@ctc.net (Bill Tippett) (Bill Tippett)
Subject: ARRL 160 Contest DX Window
Message-ID: <01HYL5YH66VC8WVYNF@SUNBELT.NET>
Don, I agree with most of what you say, especially the part about
enforcing a "non rule". If it's a "non rule", let's just eliminate it and
then we can all CQ anywhere we want. I am not critical of the few
inadvertent mistakes you described. I am VERY critical of the chronic
offenders I hear year after year who apparently feel that rules are for
everyone but themselves.
I only listened to the first 30 minutes of the contest and agree that
the window compliance sounded good...but it usually does early until
everyone figures "If W1XXX can get away with it, I can too!" I should
have listened Saturday evening but had better things to do.
The best way to enforce windows is for the 99% of us who follow the
rules to not answer the guys CQing in the window. Perhaps a rule
that states something like "USA/USA contacts between 1830 and
1835 cannot be counted for credit" would help the 99% of us who
follow the rules encourage the other 1% to CQ elsewhere. If they
are not answered in the window, they will quickly move without any
help from policemen.
Why am I so offended by the window violators? Because I feel they
are sabotaging a worthwhile attempt by the ARRL to make the 160
contest more international. I personally would love to see it become
more like the CQ 160 and less like a 160 Sweepstakes. That's just
because I happen to prefer DX contests more than Sweepstakes. If
you agree with the objective of more international participation,
and have some better ideas to achieve that, please share your ideas
with your ARRL CAC representative.
73, Bill W0ZV
P.S. You may have some problem with your Internet provider. I have
not been bounced since I signed up
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Tippett, PO Box 37, New London, NC 28127-0037 USA
Phone/FAX: +1 704-463-1445 E-mail: btippett@ctc.net
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