[WriteLog] KAM Transmit on RTTY Resolved

[Bill Wortman]

Using a number of helpful suggestions from posted and direct 
responses to my recent inquiry about problems running a KAM on RTTY 
with Writelog, I have succeeded in getting the combination to work. 
There appear to be 3 sets of serial COM  parameters whose setting can 
affect the operation.  The combination that works on my 130 MHz 
Pentium under Win95 with the KAM (not KAM+) on COM1 with a serial 
cable that has all 5serial pins wired is:

1.  PC CommPort (under control panels/system/port, or just control 
panels /port for some systems ) set to default which is 9600,1,N,8 
and None flow control.  (But baud rate and flow control do not appear 
to matter).   FIFO (advanced) is ON with moderately high values.

2. Writelog.ini under PORT has COM1 set to 9600,N,8,1,   (NOTE: not 
9600,N,8,1,x)

3.  KAM is preset to ABAUD 9600 (XFLOW is ON and MONITOR is ON, at 
least before initialization)

It was found that if FIFO is OFF, Transmitted characters are 
sometimes skipped as displayed in the KAM window and apparently also 
skipped on the air (see XXX).

Most, but not all, of the time on startup the RTTY window is inert 
and the KAM panel display lights act like it is not in the right 
mode.  If you then select FSK-Norm (or transmit a signal) the window 
starts behaving correctly and the KAM is put in the right state and 
all TX characters are displayed.

It is not clear just which of the settings is critical.  For a while 
it was working fine with Xon/Xoff for PC flow and WL.ini with 
9600,N,8,1,x but when I shut down and did a full cold restart, it 
failed.  It initialized ok but after getting the window active no TX 
characters were displayed at all even though it seemed to key the 
transmitter ok based on the length of an additional transmission.

This may be related to my use of the fully wired serial cable which 
KAM uses for Hardware flow control.  Perhaps with a lesser 3 wire 
serial cable, that does not support Hardware control (CTS/RTS), the 
Xon/Xoff may be needed as the flow control method (that is, with a 
9600,N,8,1,x   in the WL.ini file).  With the 5 wire cable and 
Xon/Xoff active, there may be flow control conflicts

In the course of my approximately 60 trials (my lost weekend) with 
various parameter selections, I had thought I used the same setting 
that are currently successful, but it failed to display any TX 
characters.  Either I was getting woozy or it may be due to some KAM 
parameters that were incidentally set since I went though several 
rounds of pre-setting the KAM using the WF1B RTTY software with 
provides access to the KAM command functions.  At times I just set 
the baud rate  (ABAUD 9600) and switched back to Writelog with no 
other changes, and at other times I did a RESTORE D followed by ABAUD 
9600 and PERM to use the default factory settings.  Bottom line is 
I'm not certain of all the current KAM settings and I'm not willing 
the risk going back to not working again to find out - at least until 
I recover. (I think they are the original factory setting except for 
ABAUD 9600).  Note that every piece of KAM software seems to alter 
the KAM parameters, both on startup and shutdown, although it does 
return to the last PERMed values when turned off.

I once attempted to keep all parameters the same except for using 
ABAUD 2400 rather than 9600 for all 3 settings.  It never was able to 
initialize the KAM using this 2400 in spite of the fact that in my 
pre-posting days, this was the baud rate at which I first found the 
skipped TX characters! ( Note that AA5AN reports using 4800 
successfully with a KAM+.)

Other combinations may work, but my work here is done.

Thanks to W2WG , VE6RAJ, AA5AU, AA4NU, ZC4DW, K5DJ and Jay.


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