[LOGic] Weird serial connection flakiness

Thu May 17 14:01:10 EDT 2007

Sometimes I lose rs-232 connection on my desktop due to RF in the line
And have to go thru the reset also effectively logging a contact on
Some wrong frequency/band/mode.
I wish there was a check box to auto reset radio interface in logic!
And one to automatically reconnect to my telnet cluster when I lose
connectivity. (happens a lot on satellite)
HINT HINT > dennis
-----Original Message-----
From: logic-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:logic-bounces at mailman.qth.net]
On Behalf Of Bill W5WVO
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2007 11:06 AM
To: [LOGic]
Subject: [LOGic] Weird serial connection flakiness
I've been having this weird problem with the serial connection between my
new Dell laptop and my TS-B2000 via LOGic7/8. (LOGic7 and LOGic8 both
manifest this problem in exactly the same way.) The symptoms are: (a)
failure of the LOGic-Radio serial connection to properly initialize on LOGic
start-up (99% of the time), and (b) losing serial connectivity with the
radio while using LOGic (at seemingly random intervals measured in tens of
minutes or hours). Clicking "Reset radio and rotor interfaces" always
establishes or re-establishes connectivity -- for a while.
This issue seems to be specific to both LOGic and to this computer or its
OS. I didn't have the problem with the desktop machine (now retired) and the
same radio. The desktop ran Windows 2000 Pro. The laptop runs Windows XP
Home. And I don't have the problem using other radio software on the same
laptop computer with the same radio at the same settings, like the Kenwood
TS-2000 control software, the 3rd-party memory mapper software, or UIView
APRS software. The serial connection with all these programs is 100%
reliable as far as I can tell. 
I have no other radios to control with this serial port and LOGic, so that's
one variable I've been unable to characterize.
My engineering background tells me that something is right on the margin of
being able to work. Marginality can be either in the voltage domain or in
the time domain, and it sure seems from these observations that this has to
be timing, since the hardware layer is the same in all configurations, those
that work reliably and the one (LOGic) that is flaky.
Two "obvious" things that this is not:
(a) It is NOT transmit RF getting into the radio's or computer's serial
logic and resetting it. I tested for this extensively. In fact, failure of
the serial connection almost always occurs when the radio and LOGic have
been idle for some amount of time. (There must be a clue in that, but I
haven't yet figured out what it is.)
(b) It is NOT too fast a baud rate or too fast a polling frequency. Changing
the serial port interface settings both on the radio and in LOGic have NO
EFFECT on this problem. I have changed baud rate, polling frequency, and
stop bits. The symptoms are always the same, regardless of how any of these
parameters are adjusted to slower speeds.
I'm getting sick of constantly reinitializing the serial connection in
LOGic. (Though it's really nice to have a way to do this without relaunching
the program!) I've talked with Dennis, and he has no clue what could be
causing this behavior. Has anyone seen these symptoms before in any LOGic
configuration?
Bill / W5WVO
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