[Mldxcc] WriteLog v10, Windows 2000 and USERPORT.ZIP Freeware

[ad6e at inreach.com]

Ron,

Sorry to hear your problems w/ Userport.

I may have been one of the first to have touble with WL and Win NT 4.0
several years back. I was told then that there wern't enough users to
justify writing a special NT port driver. Of course, NT morphed onto W2k
which morphed into XP and now everybody is using the "NT" system. Yet, WL
still doesn't support parallel port use.

Userport works for me both on the shack machine (W2K) and this laptop (XP)
so I may be lucky, although I know of many others who also use it and it
works for them. Obviously YMMV.

I've found a better solution for the CW keying line: Use the same
transistor circuit as the parallel port, but on the serial port. This way
I have only one cable between the PC and the radio for CW keying AND rig
control. AND it doesn't require Userport.

73, Al  AD6E



> WriteLog v10, Windows 2000 and using LPT port for CW keying.
> I'm posting this as a warning to all concerned. I installed Writelog
> v10.00
> on my Windows 2000 notebook. When starting up a new contest and using
> the SETUP > PORTS menu selection the option to select using LPT ports is
> grayed out. For those of you that use the common LPT port cable (same as
> TRLog) to key your radio for CW, this is an important feature to go
> without.
> Now the support info on the WriteLog SUPPORT page warns you that this is
> not supported because of the additional port address protection used by
> Windows 2000 (and XP). They give you two options, one is to use a Freeware
> program called USERPORT.zip The other is a commercial product you can
> (gulp) purchase.
>
> Documentation for this program is fair at best. It installs easy enough
> and
> it looks like your able to manipulate protection on your LPT port
> addresses
> just fine but after rebooting, the accompanying BLUE SCREEN quickly
> reminds you that you get what you pay for. Documentation for backing out
> your changes is not accurate at all. Doing a SAFE boot, and hacking  my
> W2K registry got me back to where I could boot, but I quickly ended up
> with
> a list of things that no longer worked.
>
> Being a fairly organized person I didn't hesitate to partition my
> notebook's hard
> drive and it was a breeze to install Windows 98 (for radio apps) on the
> 1st
> partition,
> then install Windows 2000 for my other work needs on the 2nd partition.
> Everything
> runs much faster than before on my W2k o/s and my two "old" logging
> programs
> (TRLog and WriteLog) have a nice home, running on Windows 98.
>
> Recommendation: If you have time on your hands, feel free to hack. On the
> other
> if you are a member of the "I HATE COMPUTERS CLUB", it's a time saver to
> use
> a DUAL BOOT system and avoid problems. I'd recommend sending email to the
> creators of WriteLog asking them to bring their software up to date by
> porting it to
> Windows 2000 and Windows XP. They ought to be able to recover any new
> development costs in new subscriptions (opinion). Can it be done? I'd
> think so.
> The reason I say that is because I am currently running DX4WIN logging
> program
> on both Windows 2000 and XP and I have that application key my radio using
> the
> LPT1 port and cable.
>
> Have fun,
> Ron - KG6CMS
>
>
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