[DSP-10] Moth balled DSP-10 has some troubles

Bob Larkin boblark at proaxis.com
Fri Mar 29 00:33:32 EDT 2013 

Hi Don (and Mike),

Don, are the +10 and +5 volt regulated voltages OK?

Can you receive and tune properly?  That should most likely have 
problems if the two 595's are not proper.  If receive and the PLL tuning 
is OK, a bunch of the control stuff would seem OK.

Change the RF gain and watch the voltage on the U107 side of R137 to 
R144.  I believe that only one of R137 to R140 and only one of R141 to 
R144 should be at 5V.  100 Gain is 5V on R140 and R144.

Also, check for 5V on the U108 side of R133 for receive and R130 for 
transmit.

You might try the Serial Diagnostic tests.  That includes a slow motion 
programming of the shift registers.  the waveform rise and fall would 
not change, but with some patience, one can possibly deduce an error in 
getting the programming from the DSP to the shift registers.

The loading problems might be PC related, but the control of the shift 
registers is not likely PC related. The actual control comes through the 
DSP.  The DSP receives 6 byte commands from the PC and then does what is 
needed.  In that regard, the command that changes the RF gain is the 
same one that does T/R control and 5 kHz frequency changes, as they all 
are part of the serial stream coming from the DSP to the 595's and the 
VHF PLL.

Let us know what you find.

73, Bob  W7PUA


On 03/28/2013 08:29 PM, Don AE5K wrote:
> Hi Mike,
>
> Thanks for the reply and suggestions.  Let me try to respond to your 
> comments and questions:
>
> No, the Dell 610 Latitude laptop does not have floppy, just CD. One 
> reason for picking it was the real serial port on it besides speed and 
> other usefulness.
>
> Yes, I have other computers, and one laptop with floppy.  An old (very 
> old Toshiba) that I originally first used with the DSP-10. I think I 
> might want to go back to this and see if I have the same problems or 
> not.  That might give a clue at least.
>
> Nearly all my computers are dual boot between some version of Windows 
> (Win95, Win98se, Win2k, WinXP, WinVista, Win7) and Linux (Debian, most 
> are ver 7.0 Wheezy and kept up to date). I use Linux 99.9% of the time 
> and only use Windows when no other choice for some applications.  
> (Every time I boot into Windows I have to wait for a long time for my 
> antivirus program and Windows to do their updates due to long time 
> non-use!)
>
> What I am booting up to is DOS (MSDOS 6), not any Windows.  It does 
> have access to both drive A: (ramdisk) and also drive C: on the hard 
> drive. Windows is not booted or operating.  I used this several years 
> ago and everything seemed to be working OK then. I might add that this 
> is the first time I've tried to measure output power, and only had one 
> 5-mile path SSB contact as mobile on 2 meters with it, so it is 
> conceivable that the strange power output problem could have been 
> present from the beginning.  I've never had the booting/loading 
> problem before, however.
>
> Not sure if the BIOS allows booting from USB, I would tend to doubt it 
> on the Dell. Haven't looked lately at the options in BIOS, but I do 
> not recall seeing that possibility.
>
> Everything appears normal when DSP-10 is running. Screen scrolls, 
> clock updates, frequency and band changes normal, waterfall trace of 
> signal, audio level normal.  I've tried quite a few of the keyboard 
> commands (ver. 3.80 w-sheet summary) and most worked, a couple I could 
> not get to work (or I misunderstood them).  The keyboard works for 
> sending CW.  It is apparently receiving OK with just in shack tests 
> from a little marker generator.  It worked OK a year ago in receiving 
> the signals from a 1296 beacon close up, but has never been tried at 
> any good distance.
>
> Yes, this was a TAPR kit with the original AD module, the name EZKIT 
> lite 2181 sounds like the one.
>
> I might add, on the boot up problem: there have been several instances 
> where the firmware did not download to the 2181 -- one case it just 
> sat there and no action on the screen, another case it appeared to 
> dump to the screen the hex numbers that it was supposed to download.  
> Additionally, when calling upon UHFA 1 to load the program into the 
> PC, it has stalled there several times. Other times, it goes thru both 
> loads smoothly and the screen lights up with the normal display.
>
> As I said above, I think my next move tomorrow is to try everything 
> with the older Toshiba laptop with the software on floppy which worked 
> fine before.  I'll post to the reflector the results.
>
> Don AE5K
>
>
> On 03/28/2013 08:20 PM, kd7ts wrote:
>> Hi Don,
>>
>> Not familiar with the Dell 610, does it have a floppy drive ?
>>
>> Do you have a machine with a floppy drive and serial port you can use 
>> for trouble shooting ?
>>
>> I have installed dual boot on my laptops that allows booting DR DOS 
>> or W98. Really old WIN but useful occasionally.
>>
>> If troubleshooting is the issue, just run in a box under whatever WIN 
>> is installed, up to XP. Don't know what 7 and 8 do, but up to XP it 
>> works, but has really crappy timing. CW modes don't work properly, 
>> maybe other things, but it should get you into troubleshooting only 
>> one thing at a time. If it is slow into transmit or back to receive, 
>> this might be normal under a WIN dos box. Oh, yeah, almost forgot 
>> about this, with WIN. You will need to get a file from KA7EXM named 
>> UHF3_33X.EXE that deals with serial port timing under WIN.
>>
>> http://www.ka7exm.net/dsp10/uhf3_33x.zip
>>
>> Read the page this from for more info ...
>>
>> http://www.ka7exm.net/dsp10/
>>
>> If you have lots of time and a strong will, you might try Dosbox 
>> under Linux. This works quite well, but would not be my first choice 
>> with an unknown problem. Maybe you know about Puppy Linux. It will 
>> run from a bootable CD, and is about the easiest way to get LINUX 
>> running.
>>
>> The CD-R boot sounds like a neat idea. My machines don't support that 
>> in the BIOS, others do, but not my laptops.
>>
>> Does your BIOS support booting from USB ? Just an odd thought.
>>
>> ------
>>
>> When the DSP-10 is running, does everything appear normal ? screen 
>> scrolls up screen clock updates, you can change frequency and audio 
>> level ?
>>
>> Was this a TAPR kit ?  (just trying to guess the vintage) KK7P 
>> interface with ADSP-2185 ? or maybe has a EZKIT lite 2181.
>>
>> Sorry for having more questions than answers, but I hope this is useful.
>>
>> 73 Mike KD7TS
>
> ______________________________________________________________
> DSP-10 mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/dsp-10
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:DSP-10 at mailman.qth.net
>
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
>
>

More information about the DSP-10 mailing list