Limited to 13 entries in memeory bank A

Control and memory management software for Icom transceivers
va3ae
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri 22. Feb 2008, 04:02

Limited to 13 entries in memeory bank A

Unread post by va3ae »

Hi Tom, what a great program you have built. As I Unix sysadmin, and a guy who supports Mac users and feeds a Mac Mini rendering cluster, it is great to see you writing ham software for the Mac.

In spite of my Unix heritage, I have been running HRD for several years, and I have a Win32 computer dedicated to a few ham radio programs. I recently upgraded from the FT-857 to the IC-7000 and I wanted to import the lists of frequencies, and the preferences that I have for operation.

Your program is very nice, however I have been having three problems with it that I would like to see if we can sort out.

The first is that sometimes I cannot read from the radio. I am using one of the g4zlp usb interfaces, and a traditional DB9/rs232 civ. rumtrol is very fussy about the polling rate, and I cannot connect 50% of the time. Sometimes I even must reboot. If I go to HRD, I can connect without difficulty, it however of course does no memory management!

The second is that I cannot get the radio to accept more than 13 entries in the memory bank A. I have been trying to understand this but have unfortunately not had success.

The third was trying to create a plist or other file type so that I can programatically rearrange the frequencies and their order without having to first type them into the interface. I have several lists of several hundred frequencies we use for DX and local activities that I have accumulated over the last few years, and I have them in plain text list files that I can manipulate with vi and perl to do the things I want them to.

I tried to use the import strategy that you mentioned to the fellow who wanted to import his repeater guide, but alas, I had no luck, just error messages about the wrong number of fields. I must look at that again.

Perhaps I should grab one of the macbooks from work and try it on OSX? This might solve all the problems!

Congratulations on such an excellent product, and I hope I can contribute something back to your effort!

VY 73 de dave, va3ae
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DL2RUM
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Re: Limited to 13 entries in memeory bank A

Unread post by DL2RUM »

Hi Dave, thanks for your nice words and I'm sorry for your troubles.
Just to clarify: Do you use RUMtrol on Win32?
Lets start with the preferences. When your CAT interface gets the power from the port, first try to check the boxes 'Set RTS Line' and 'Set DTR Line'. Move the 'Poll Time' slider full to the right. The communication is then very slow, but should be more reliable. Later you can adjust it further to the left hand side. Make sure, your radio is set to the same baudrate as RUMtrol. Do not use the 'Auto' baud setting in the IC-7000 menu.

It seems your communication is not stable and after 13 memory uploads the TRX goes out of sync.

When you can manipulate text files, try the format mentioned here: http://dl2rum.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=25. Make sure you have at least the first 12 fields included! When you have no luck, e-mail me the text file and I will see if I can convert it
73 and best dx de Tom, DL2RUM
va3ae
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri 22. Feb 2008, 04:02

Re: Limited to 13 entries in memory bank A

Unread post by va3ae »

Hi Tom thanks for the quick reply.

Yes I am trying to run this on Win32.

As we say in English, "you hit the nail on the head!"

I increased the polling time and as you thought, the data stream remained in sequence and the complete list transferred. I will read through the CI-V spec, but it appears there is little, or perhaps not any, error correction.

Is there a reasonable range of polling rates that works for a Pentium4 2.66GHz computer?

Or is it just a function of the 19200 bit rate?

I will see if I can recreate a plist using perl that will read from my old comma separated files to reorder the fields, populate the arrays properly and not give your program indigestion!

I am home with "The Flu" this week, so when I return to work I will sign out one of my macbooks and install your program to see if things will work differently for me.

All the best,
David
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DL2RUM
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Re: Limited to 13 entries in memeory bank A

Unread post by DL2RUM »

Fine to read this David. I have no experience with the poll rate on a windows machine. Here on a MacBook Pro 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo I have set it to 60 ms. That means every 60 ms is a command send to the radio. When the processor in the radio is more busy for any reason and can't process the command within this time slot, we will get a collusion on the databus probably.
73 and best dx de Tom, DL2RUM
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