[CQ-Contest] Ic 706 Mark 11 and Writelog for NAQP CW

[Pete Smith]

Denny's right, the Winkey is the way to go.  However, for those just 
getting their feet wet in CW contesting, N1MM Logger does a pretty good job 
of doing the "essentially impossible", as he describes it.  I used N1MM for 
a year with parallel port keying, on an el-cheapo Dell Dimension 2400 with 
512 MB of RAM and Windows XP.  After I got my first Winkey (largely to be 
able to interface a paddle with the program) I found I could not tell by 
listening whether I was using the Winkey or parallel port CW.  There were 
absolutely NO hiccups, malformed characters or choppiness with the simple 
parallel port interface.

73, Pete N4ZR

At 08:18 AM 7/31/2007, Dennis OConnor wrote:
>WIndows XP cannot dedicate an I/O port with no interrupts and will 
>continue time slicing all serial, parallel, and usb I/O (even with no 
>other programs running, due to internal interrupt calls)  Smooth CW is 
>essentially impossible from software to I/O port due to the CPU constantly 
>interrupting the CW stream to service interrupt calls...  It is not the 
>fault of the logging program but an architecture constraint of the cpu...
>   I am running N1MM currently and using it to drive an external keyer... 
> I am using the Winkey2 USB keyer and have been happy with it...  But the 
> other keyers should work also, Microham, etc...  What happens here is the 
> logging program squirts an ascii sentence to the keyer... The keyer cpu 
> then handles all the timing and keying chores without being interrupted 
> by other tasks...  I suspect Wrotelog will work in a similar fashion with 
> an external keyer...
>
>   denny / k8do
>
>
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