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

[John L Merrill]

Where is 1.63b coming from? It's not on the mmtty website. Is it just
available to some for beta testing?

John N1JM

-----Original Message-----
From: rtty-bounces at contesting.com [mailto:rtty-bounces at contesting.com]On
Behalf Of Don Hill AA5AU
Sent: Sunday, February 02, 2003 9:36 PM
To: RTTY Reflector; WriteLog Reflector
Subject: [RTTY] MMTTY 1.63b test results in the XE RTTY contest


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





http://www.aa5au.com
http://www.geocities.com/writelog



_______________________________________________
RTTY mailing list
RTTY at contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/rtty
---
Incoming mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.449 / Virus Database: 251 - Release Date: 1/27/2003