[WriteLog] PK232 and CW

[Don Hill]

The PK232 has never worked well on CW (with WriteLog anyway).  I've
used it several times.  I'm not sure what happens to it after a while, the MULT
light flashes and it stops responding.  Turning the PK232 off, then back on,
gets it working again.  Other than that, it does do some strange things
occasionally and the casual CW contest and put up with it (like me).

It seems like a buffer is filling up in the unit causing it to stop responding and
I thought I had it cured by turning the threshold down until the DCD lamp stayed
unlit, not allowing anything into the receive buffer.  The PK232 manual states
that the MULT LED will flash when it's receive buffer is filled.  One thing you
might try is disconnecting any audio input to the PK232 AND turning down the
threshold.

As far as stacked buffers are concerned with the PK232, it doesn't work.  It's
not a WriteLog problem.  It's the PK232 that doesn't allow it to happen.  The
same thing happens in RTTY, you can not stack buffers in WriteLog with the
PK232.  It's not just WriteLog.  You can't stack buffers in RTTY using the PK232
with WF1B either.  You can stack buffers with a KAM using WF1B and my
KAM's on the "to be repaired" bench at the moment so I can't test it with WriteLog.

Best bet for serious contesters is to not use the PK232 to send CW with
WriteLog.  Since you need a COM port for the PK232, you may as well use
that COM port to send CW directly.

73, Don AA5AU


----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark and Beth Mowery" <mowery@shianet.org>
To: "Writelog mailing list" <writelog@contesting.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2000 7:19 PM
Subject: [WriteLog] PK232 and CW


>
> Hello all ...
>
> Using Win 98 on a PIII.  I have a PK232 on COM 1 for the PacketCluster - it
> works fine.  Another PK232 on COM 2 for CW - well, that's another story ...
>
> The PK232 on CW works fine for a while, and then it will stop responding to
> keyboard commands and refuses to send any more CW. Then through some
> apparently random combination of keystrokes, mouseclicks, and curses, it
> will begin sending CW again.
>
> Can anyone with greater knowledge of these things than me help me out here?
> Why does the thing go dumb periodically?
>
> 73,
> Mark AA8TC
> http://www.qrz.com/callsign.html?callsign=aa8tc
> http://www.qsl.net/aa8tc
>
>
> --
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>
>




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