[Dx4win] Pauses in Win7 64-bit Continued

[Byron Peebles]

Some time ago I posted more than one item about pauses I experienced in 
64-bit Windows when using DX4WIN.  It is very frustrating on CW, in the 
middle of a contact where the other station feels you just went away.  
Not polite, either.  But, since it happened in more places than that, 
like when you double-clicked a spot and wanted it to move to the QSO 
Window, it was more than CW.

My plan was to upgrade the computing power, since I suspected it might 
be the mini-ITX Atom-based computer that I built.  I didn't have many 
other non-video uses that stressed this hardware, but I knew it was the 
low-end from the mainstream so I thought a hardware upgrade might help.

I spent about 30 hours of personal time on the physical upgrade from a 
1.8GHz dual-core ATOM to a 2.7GHz i5-2500 machine.  Both are very small 
formal mini-ITX boxes (an M350 case), so they are great for a shack 
where space is limited and what you have needs to go to radios.

The good news is that I finished the upgrade and didn't lose any logs or 
functionality.  The bad news is the 30 hours it took and the fact things 
aren't any different.  The pause is still there, it isn't RF related and 
the hardware (and a fair amount of software) is swapped out.

So, all those folks who sent me messages that they had the same problem, 
let's start sharing our DX4WIN settings.  I would like to know how 
people hve configured their COM ports for the required serial interfaces 
for the radio (since it is polled) and anything else that is COM, 
especially if they use USB.  The major delay in this migration was bugs 
in USB software (the hub controllers and related drivers) and I'm 
thinking that might be my problem in running 64-bit Windows.

The silver lining is that I got all the Ubuntu boxes upgraded to 11.04 
while I waited for Windows to recover from its BlueScreen syndrome, and 
I'm back on the air again with a log.

73, Byron