[Trlog] TRLog and XP

[Richard Ferch]

KD4D said:


>Windows XP will not readily allow a DOS program to access
>the serial and parallel ports directly.  I'm not aware of any
>way to make it work AT ALL, much less with timing good
>enough to send CW.  If you figure out a way to do it, please
>let us all know!

Mark,

On my system (a 2.5 GHz Pentium with 480 MHz available RAM running XP Home 
SP2), I can get some serial port functions to work with TR, although not 
well enough to be usable.

I open up a Command Prompt window, cd to the TRLog directory and start TR 
with no config file. If I select rig control on COM2 (a real COM port on 
the motherboard) with no other usage of ports selected, communications with 
my radio (a Kenwood TS-850) works (sort of). The frequency display in TR 
keeps on disappearing, then coming back after a second or two. I conclude 
that there are timing problems causing some of the polls to be dropped. If 
the only port function you use is rig control and you are willing to wait a 
couple of seconds after changing bands to make sure it "takes", you might 
find this acceptable. I imagine it would be useless for SO2R.

In a second trial, I did not select rig control but instead chose CW via 
serial port, again using COM2. Function keys will send CW, although it is 
choppy (dits and dahs randomly shortened). If I use F10 for keyboard CW, 
some of the elements are lengthened, so some dits and dahs are half a 
second long, others are normal. It's basically unreadable. Again, obviously 
there are timing problems on the serial port.

If I try to select both rig control and CW from the same serial port, rig 
control stops working completely.

The parallel port CW and paddle interface does not work at all, so there is 
basically no way to key CW.

Using two different Windows programs rig control, serial port CW and 
parallel port CW (with the help of a special driver for the LPT port) work 
fine; indeed, the serial port functions, including PTT, also work through a 
USB adapter. So the problem is not in the hardware itself, it's in the 
limited hardware access XP gives to the Command Prompt ("DOS") window.

73,
Rich VE3IAY


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