[WriteLog] Serial Port Choppy CW

Fri Jun 30 10:12:44 EDT 2006

In a message dated 6/29/2006 5:40:47 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
w7ry at centurytel.net writes:
Greetings.
I'm getting Writelog version 10.59D set up on a old IBM ThinkPad 390X
laptop 450Mhz and running Windows 2000. It has a built in serial port.
When I use the serial port to send CW, it sounds choppy on some of the
characters. This is a fresh re-load of Windows 2000 and I downloaded all
of the updates from Microsoft.
I did a search of the archives and found some stuff dealing with the
parallel port sending choppy CW but found nothing about the serial port
doing this.
Ideas?
Thanks and 73
Jim W7RY
Jim,

Choppy cw has always been a problem with WL as far as I know. It happens 
with cw keying on both serial port and lpt ports. I believe it is associated 
with the cpu being "overloaded" by too many processes requiring cpu cycles 
simultaneously. You can reduce the occurrence of choppy cw by shutting down any 
programs that are running concurrently with WL, such as virus checking 
software, but you will probably not eliminate the problem altogether.

To get around studdering cw problem and the fact that my new laptop has 
neither a serial port or an lpt port, I now use a microHam CW Keyer with WL. 
This device interfaces with WL to provide both radio control and cw keying via 
the computer's USB port. It works beautifully, and I can highly recommend it. 
 There are number of microHam products that will do the trick, and the CW 
Keyer is just one of them. Ck them out at 
_http://www.microham-usa.com/products.html_ (http://www.microham-usa.com/products.html) . I have no affiliation 
with this company, other than being a satisfied customer.

73, Geo...k5kg