[SD-User] CW keying using SD 17.14 on Win 7 Laptop

[Paul O'Kane]

On 13/09/2013 23:47, Paul Bigwood wrote:
> SD CAT frequency control works fine but external keying is non existent and unintelligible when the internal sidetone command is used.

When using SD's internal keying, it's one or the other
(but not both) with regard to internal sidetone and
external keying (via COM port).  The SIDETONE command
toggles between the two.

The fact that internal sidetone may be unintelligible
on Win7 or Win8 is not significant - external keying
will still work.


> Logger 32 works flawlessly for CW keying, frequency and mode control,

I'm using SD on both Win7 and Win8 and those three
functions work as expected.  Keying and rig control
are entirely separate in SD, one does not affect the
other.  DTR is used for keying and RTS for PTT
control - that has not changed and I believe it's
the standard for all contest loggers.

>   which makes me think that the problem is with SD and the way it handles USB comports.

Probably not :-)   SD sees USB comports, and their
port numbers, whatever way they're presented to the
PC by the external USB/Serial converters.  SD knows
nothing about USB - it sees only serial ports.

> Why is CW from the internal sidetone so bad?

Don't know, but it may be academic because, when
you're hearing any sidetone it means that external
keying is not enabled.  I will probably remove this
"feature" as users can always get sidetone from the
rig or from WinKey.

> Is there something  I can do in the windows configuration ( run in XP or Win98 mode? ) that will make it work OK?
>
> Laptop was originally supplied with Windows 7 starter and SD was a non starter with that. Sometimes it would run OK for just logging, no COM CAT or keying and suddenly it would start to misbehave where the callsign entry area was continually being overwritten.

I have confirmed that V17.14 works on XP, Win7 and Win8.
It does not work on Win98.  I'm not aware of any current
issues with rig control or external keying via USB
to serial converters.  For example, I'm using a single
USB socket on a Win8 laptop to a 4-port USB adaptor with
one port for keying (to WinKey, appearing as COM7) and a
second for rig control via a USB/Serial cable (Maplin's
cheapest) appearing as COM8.

Please try disabling rig control by setting its port
to 0, then test keying on its own with sidetone off.

73,
Paul EI5DI