[Elecraft] The K2 and the serial port - resolved

[Floyd Sense]

My last post on this topic!

In response to Julian - Yes, the diddling with the serial ports on startup
has been going on since the beginning.  However, the changes I mentioned for
XP (also available for Win 2000) will eliminate this problem completely.
You may not believe the solution works, but it's not a "registry hack", but
it's how Microsoft chose to implement the function.  If it didn't work 100%,
I would not have said that it did!

Don - that makes sense to me as well, but the good Rigblaster folks didn't
see fit to give you the ability to turn off the interface.  You can't power
it off without disconnecting the power cable, and you can't disable the
interface without disconnecting the RS-232C cables.  Not the way my homebrew
interface is designed!  My audio for RTTY and PSK comes from a separate
sound card so am isolated from the Windows sound problems.

The net of all this is: A lot of folks use Rigblasters with their K2 on RTTY
and PSK.  On at least some XP systems, this combination can result in
key-down-forever hangs if XP should reboot and you're not there to see it
happen.  The situation is completely avoidable if you have XP or Win 2000,
or you can take the chance that you'll ALWAYS have the K2 powered down when
a reboot occurs.  Not a worthwhile gamble, in my opinion.

Back to DXing with the K2!

73, K8AC


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Don Wilhelm" <w3fpr@peoplepc.com>
To: "Floyd Sense" <sentek@sprintmail.com>; "Elecraft"
<elecraft@mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2004 8:01 AM
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] The K2 and the serial port - resolved


> Floyd and all,
>
> What makes better sense to me is to set the Rigblaster (or other
interface)
> to an inactive state (OFF) during the boot process Turning the K2 off also
> works).  In addition to the inadvertent keying problem, there is the
> possibility of transmitting the 'music' sounds that the OS plays after
> booting - and such transmissions could be in the CW/Data portion of the
band
> too - not a good thing and illegal in this country as well.
>
> 73,
> Don W3FPR