During the past CQWW SSB weekend I discoverd yet another way to
mess things up. My station is fully integrated with TRLog; this
includes two band decoders hooked to two of the computer's parallel
ports.
While quite groggy Sunday afternoon, I accidentally hit the
key on the keyboard labeled "Print Scrn SysRq" - which killed the
band output data on LPT1, which happened to be my run radio. I
was wondering why the band went dead all of a sudden; muttering
"flare," but then noticing that the SWR was very high and the
TopTen Band Decoder having no bands selected. This was
"solved" by rebooting the computer. However, before the end of
the contest I managed to do it again so I went outside to see
if maybe something else was wrong. I couldn't find any other
problem so finished the contest.
Last night, in an effort to tune out the election coverage, I
spent some time in front of the computer, which runs MSDOS 6.22.
Holding down the PrintScrn/SysRq key reliably kills the parallel
port; the eye can see lots of data pouring down the line because
the lights flicker and the relays in my AntiMurphy Box clatter.
In addition to rebooting the computer, I found that changing bands
would reset the parallel port.
It would be nice if keys like "PrintScrn/Sys Rq" and "Pause/Break"
were trapped out by TRLog so reduce cockpit error.
This was using version 6.78, as 6.79 doesn't work with the parallel
port band data at all.
Terry Zivney, N4TZ/9
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