[RTTY] MMTTY 1.63b test results in the XE RTTY contest

[Don Hill AA5AU]

I ran the MMTTY 1.63b engine with WriteLog in this weekend's XE RTTY
contest.  I ran it on both my A and B computers in my SO2R two PC setup.

Computer A is a 200 mhz Pentium I running Win98se.  Computer B is a 333 mhz
Pentium II also running 98se.  Both computers were running WriteLog v10.39c with
the MMTTY plug-in for WriteLog V13.exe.

Computer A was keying FSK from an add-on COM port and B was keying FSK
from a Belkin USB-to-serial adapter.

The problem experienced in the ARRL RTTY Roundup by several WriteLog
users running the MMTTY plug-in for WriteLog and the 1.63 engine was that
on occasion when an F key was pressed to send a message, the transmitter would
key briefly, then unkey.  The only way to get it going again was to wait.  Eventually,
after a minute or two, the buffer keys would work again.

I'm sorry to say that 1.63b does the same thing.  Although it doesn't happen often,
it does happen.  On computer A, it happened twice.  Nothing I did, short of closing
WriteLog (which I didn't do) would make it work again.  It happened once on computer B.
When it occurred on computer B, I shut down the Rttyrite window running MMTTY
and restarted it, but the problem remained.  I found this very strange.  After about a
minute or so, it started working again.

On one of the two occasions the problem occurred on computer A, I was
in Auto-CQ.  So it wasn't a direct result of pressing an F key.  I'd not experienced
that before.

Also, the Rttyrite window running on computer B crashed twice giving me the "This
program has performed an illegal operation" message.  Each time, I was able to restart
the Rttyrite window with the MMTTY control panel without having to exit WriteLog or
reboot.

I decided to revert back to the 1.62 engine on computer B about 6 hours into the contest.
There were no problems at all after I went back to 1.62 on computer B.  Coincidentally,
there were no other problems on computer A running 1.63b either, but the action was pretty
slow by then, especially on Sunday when condx went from mediocre to just plain bad and I
finally had to quit after 500 Q's.

I tried all kinds of different things with the MMTTY settings after each problem or crash.
At one time, I changed the priority on computer B to "higher" instead of "highest" in the
MMTTY setup.  When I did this, it crashed almost immediately so I went back to "highest".
Since the F key problem only occurred a total of 3 times, it was hard to determine if there
was anything that could be done about it with settings.  But I don't think so.

It's a strange problem.  I sent my results to Ken, VE5KC, who will relay them to Mako.

I realize that the problems are minor and correctable after a couple of minutes.  I never had
to reboot the machines, which is a good thing.  However, it's a little unnerving when it does
happen.  In a serious contest effort, having this sort of thing occur could possibly throw
someone's rhythm off for a while.  And for that reason, I am reverting back to v1.62 on both
PC's for this weekend's WPX RTTY contest.  See you then!

73, Don AA5AU





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