[WriteLog] Multi-Keyer Problems

[Richard L. King]

Thanks Wayne.

This is a extremely helpful post and I will print it out to keep it handy.

The assignment of rigs by clicking on the radio (top and bottom) buttons 
was something that I had completely missed before. When I followed your 
directions, the setup of the radios was clear and fail-proof. I had used 
those buttons before to set frequencies, etc; but I never realized that the 
com ports needed to be set there in addition to the setup -> ports area.

It is amazing that I could eventually get it to work before by messing with 
radio right/left and setup/ports manipulations.

As for the PTT problem, I will set the radios to the no "COMM PTT" setting 
and see if that fixes the problem. It may take a while to say for sure 
since the problem was intermittent before.

I have now been playing with the settings and have found that with the 
radio's COMM PTT off (on the two MkV radios), the CW PTT set to "On LPT pin 
16/COMM RTS", and "PTT to CW Delay" set to 50ms; then I am able to key both 
radios without losing the first dot or dash of the first character sent.

I got these settings by trial and error and I am a little confused why I 
needed to make a LPT selection to make the radios key the way I wanted them 
to. I don't have a LPT connected to anything on this new computer running 
XP and the LPT reference confuses. The other combinations of settings 
causes me to lose the first dot or dash on at least one of the radios.

If anyone ever taught a "Dummies for Writelog" class, I would sign up 
immediately to attend.

Wayne, thanks for the timely response and the good information.

73, Richard

At 08:37 PM 12/16/2003, Wayne Wright, W5XD wrote:
> > When I first hooked the keyer up I found that the PTT line will drop the
> > radio back to receive sometimes while it is sending. This happens whether
> > I
> > am sending from CW memories and/or sending with the paddle input. The
> > problem seems to come and go and will drop out right in the middle of a
> > string of characters.
>
>In WriteLog, under Setup Ports, look at the row that has the Yaesu
>selection. There is a column labeled "COMM PTT". For the FT-1000MP, that
>column must be set to NONE (or OFF, or whatever it says for negative).
>With that feature turned on, WL sends a "PTT ON" command over the COMM
>port. For most rigs, that is a good thing. The FT-1000MP does NOT work
>properly when it gets such a command--it does what you describe. (I think
>I may remove the PTT ON command from the FT-1000 rig driver--it has done
>nothing but cause trouble. Its in there for "completeness" because its the
>closes thing that rig has to the needed command.)
>
>After you make changes in the Setup Ports dialog and then OK,
>you must also do Setup Save Configuration. to commit the changes to
>WRITELOG.INI.
>
> > Problem 3. I seem to have a lot of trouble getting the Writelog program to
> > read the frequency from both radios when I am setting up for SO2R. One
> > radio is on com 1 and the other is on com 8.
> >
>
>Getting set up for two rigs requires an extra step beyond what happens for
>one. In the Setup Ports dialog, you must turn on two rows in the
>dialog--one for COM1 and the other for COM8. Then you OK the dialog.
>
>Now the second step that you didn't have to do with just one radio: If you
>have Radio Number of radios set at less than 2, then change it to 2. There
>are now two buttons on the Entry Window below a label named "Radio". One
>at a time, press each button. It pops up a box showing which COM port it
>is using (lower right)--make sure the upper entry window gives COM1 and
>the lower one gives COM8 (or the other way around--whichever you want it
>to be). With only 1 radio, the second step doesn't happen because WL knows
>that only one window gets the one radio. With two radios, it only "plumbs
>up" the first.
>
>Once you get it like you want, Setup Save Configuration again.
>
>Wayne

k5na at texas.net