[WriteLog] [microHAM] WL and winkey

[Wayne Wright, W5XD]

Well, I have to eat some crow here. After typing up the message attached
below, I went back and re-read the original K1EL documentation, the
complaints from the microHam people, and some individual comments from
users about what is going on, and I finally see what the "polling" problem
is. The "speed pot" problem and the "2/3 full" problem I am also looking
at by rereading the K1EL doc's, although I am not so sure what the problem
is--WL appears to me to comply with the K1EL docs.

The next update of WL will have some changes that will need some beta
testing... more later. and excuses below.

Wayne, W5XD

In my own defense, I must say that I actually bought and built a K1EL
keyer and I test WL with it, and "polling" it from WL is not a problem for
either WL or the Winkey chip when dedicated COM port hardware is used. But
after looking at all the detail again, I now see that if those trying to
convince me to fix WL had quoted something from the K1EL documentation
(like this line: "speed pot and status bytes can be unsolicited") rather
than vague, useless and preachy statements like this: "If the DLL were
used, WriteLog would not need to poll WinKey at all", then I would have
gotten to a solution more quickly.

The actual problem with "polling" now appears to me to be that WL sends
a "request status" command dozens of times per second to the WinKey. On
dedicated hardware, this causes no problem at all because the hardware has
nothing else to do and WL can easily and cheaply process the (redundant)
status bytes it gets in return, and the WinKey hardware queues it and
answers at its leisure--neither side is stressed. But on the microHam USB
hardware, this repeated status request is causing the USB router a
headache getting those (redundant) bytes through along with the other
stuff it is trying to do.

>>>What does WRITELOG say about the problem?
>
> What I have to say about the problem is that:
>
> 1. The "solution" promoted by the Winkey support would make it impossible
> for WL to do auto-CQ, dueling CQ's etc because WL can't tell when the
> transmission ends without polling the Winkey device. And I would only be
> able to provide such crippled support if I were willing to write special
> code to support a crippled device--and I am not willing to spend my time
> writing such code.
>
> 2. I am not interested in using 3rd party DLL's to support writing a COM
> port. WL already has enough complicated logic dealing with COM ports--it
> is already to the point where I would guess 30% of hams can't successfully
> configure WL to run on their machine when it, in fact, is capable of
> running, but the instructions are too complicated, the setup is too
> complicated, there are too many special devices that want their own setup
> to be set up a certain way, etc. etc. etc. I am not willing to go any
> further down that road without cleaning it up.
>
> Also note (if you are considering buying this) that the Winkey guys have
> recently released new firmware for their USB router to deal with some
> problems with doing rig control through their hardware. (This is after
> having sent around some emails to users about how WL is broken and needs
> to be fixed....). If you want to use their USB router and do rig control
> and CW through it with WriteLog, then you'll definitely need to get that
> firmware.
>
> Wayne, W5XD
>
> Wayne
>