[WriteLog] CW direct keying

Fri Jul 11 05:09:31 EDT 2014

Hi Joe,
The USB interface for direct CW keying is an old Prolific PL2030-H and 
the options you mentioned aren't shown for that port. I'll come back to 
this later as I mentioned that I only used this interface as the Winkey 
in the the data interface locked up but was ok again after unplugging 
for 24hours. However the serial port options are listed for the RTTY 
port which is an FTI USB inbuilt into the data interface.
I've set up all my holiday/vacation kit as it was in SV5, running 0% 
power into a dummy load and RXing on my main station. Now I can see why 
I had a lot of repeats on RTTY! I was actually using RTTYrite to key the 
FSK. As each message is sent the first 2 or 3 characters are incorrectly 
sent each time, even if adding more spaces at the start. I have amended 
the settings you suggested and latency/buffers were already set as per 
the Writelog manual, but there is no change. As a test I then used MMTTY 
to key the FSK via the EXTFSK DLL and that keys perfectly. So I'm pretty 
much sorted with RTTY, I have to remember next time not to key directly 
from RTTYrite but to use the MMTTY EXTFSK.

73 Darren G0TSM

On 10/07/2014 15:08, Joe Subich, W4TV wrote:
>
> Darren,
>
> If your interface is USB based try some of all of the following:
>
> Open Windows Device Manager and select the COM port created by
> your interface.  Double click to open Properties, select the Port
> Settings tab and click "Advanced".
>
> 1) try reducing the Transmit and Receive buffer sizes - with CW
>    and software FSK you are only transferring a very few bytes
>    at a time.  The default 4096 byte buffers may be too big.
> 2) Reduce the "Latency Timer"
> 3) increase the Write Timeout slightly
> 4) Make sure "Serial Printer" and "Enable Selective Suspend"
>    are *NOT* checked.
>
> Finally *never* use bit banged CW or FSK if you have a mass storage
> device connected - including "thumb" or "jump" drives, external USB
> hard drives or optical drives, USB camera, etc.  Mass Storage devices
> set very large buffers and high Latency Timer ("slot size") to optimize
> large data transfers and can greatly impact the fine timing necessary
> for accurate CW or RTTY.
>
> Note much of this has been posted in the past and part of it may be in
> the WriteLog help files.
>
> 73,
>
>    ... Joe, W4TV
>
>
> On 2014-07-09 3:51 PM, Darren Collins (G0TSM) wrote:
>> I re-hooked up the direct keying interface and tried changing the
>> priority in the Windows task manager, but it made no difference, same
>> issue kept cropping up, even with anti-virus disabled on the
>> near-vannilla Win7 32bit installation. Incidentally it is the same for
>> RTTY but is harder to hear the problem when TXing, the rtty QSOs were
>> taking longer due to callers repeating their exchanges as I was sending
>> un-decodable replies.
>> As a test I tried Logger32 directly keying the same interface in CW and
>> RTTY (it's a dual rtty/cw direct keying interface) and that ran smoothly
>> so i'll need to do some more investigating.
>>
>> 73 Darren G0TSM
>>
>>
>>
>> On 06/07/2014 21:59, Darren Collins (G0TSM) wrote:
>>> Wayne,
>>> Thanks for replying... Luckily the Winkey unit has sprung back into
>>> life after being disconnected for 24hrs, but i'll try your suggestion
>>> on direct keying tomorrow.
>>>
>>> 73 Darren (SV5/)G0TSM
>>>
>>> On 06/07/2014 18:30, Wayne, W5XD wrote:
>>>>> my Winkey compatible interface has failed, luckily
>>>>> I have a spare directkeying interface which is just an
>>>>> opto-isolater type. It works fine but everynow and then
>>>>> it will just go crazy and it sounds like rig is being
>>>>> keyed very fast with rough choppy CW.
>>>> This is a tough one. The reason WinKey exists is exactly the situation
>>>> you're in. Its not COM port settings that are your problem. Your
>>>> problem is
>>>> tasks that Windows thinks are higher priority than WriteLog and its CW
>>>> timers. It might be possible to track them down, but its not easy. I
>>>> would
>>>> start with virus checkers--turn them all off. (Why? they tend to 
>>>> install
>>>> themselves as being higher priority than anything else on the 
>>>> machine.)
>>>>
>>>> I would at least have a look at the Processes tab of the Windows Task
>>>> Manager (right click in your Start Menu bar, and choose Task manager)
>>>> and
>>>> sort by "CPU". See if something is running that you recognize and see
>>>> if you
>>>> an figure out how to turn it off.
>>>>
>>>> You might even try sorting that same panel by Image Name, find
>>>> WriteL32.exe,
>>>> right click on it, and raise its priority. I have never tried that.
>>>> But I
>>>> don't think it can hurt anything.
>>>>
>>>> Wayne, W5XD
>>>>
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>>>
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>>
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