[Elecraft] [K3] Bad COM port made K3 not work

[Carl Clawson]

I had suspected something like what you suggest, Ed,  but I double checked
that no S/W was running -- although with N1MM there's a separate executable
for keying the CW and I did not check for that. What was weird was that the
rig powered up fine with no error message (except the ERR BP, which was
probably human error) and only went nuts when you touched a button. If PTT
or a key closure were asserted at power up, we should have seen ERR KEY or
ERR PTT and we did not.

And to whoever it was who pointed out Tom's "click" pun, thanks! I have
trained myself so thoroughly to not complain about spelling and grammar
errors on the Internet that I completely failed to notice. And I love a good
groaner! I don't know if my Yaesu friend - who's a really great guy BTW -
has done the click mods to his FT-1000MPs (3 of `em at last count). I'll
remember to needle him about it...

73 -- Carl WS7L

> -----Original Message-----
> From: elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net 
> [mailto:elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Edward R Cole
> Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 10:18 AM
> To: elecraft at mailman.qth.net
> Subject: [Elecraft] [K3] Bad COM port made K3 not work
> 
> I had a similar incident where my K3 locked up in transmit.  
> I had been using WSPR sw that controls PTT via the com port 
> (RS-232).  I believe I was on 20m and it did transmit a 
> carrier.  I quickly deduced that it was keyed from the 
> computer and unplugged the RS-232 cable and cycled power and 
> it was fine afterward.  I would suspect this is more a case 
> of computer confusion than a K3 bug.  (I probably forgot to 
> stop WSPR).
> 
> 73, Ed - KL7UW
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 14
> Date: Sun, 02 May 2010 11:24:33 -0700
> From: "Carl Clawson" <carlclawson at verizon.net>
> Subject: [Elecraft] [K3] Bad COM port made K3 not work
> To: "'Elecraft'" <elecraft at mailman.qth.net>
> Message-ID: <2E525A629436496D87DFD9543A4F3815 at Thumbelina>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
> 
> I arrived at a friend's station for the 7th area QSO party at 
> the crack of dark yesterday morning and they were pulling 
> hairs out over a misbehaving K3. F/W V3.79. None of them knew 
> the K3, whose owner hadn't arrived yet. It had been working 
> fine the previous evening as they were prepping for the contest.
> 
> It would power up but as soon as you hit any button it would 
> send a continuous side tone. I don't know if it was actually 
> transmitting but the user interface would become mostly non 
> responsive. You could turn it off with the power button and 
> that was about it. There was no ERR KEY or ERR PTT display, 
> so it doesn't seem like it was just a problem with the radio 
> keying up. We were using VOX and not the COM port for PTT, 
> but I forget if VOX was on. We couldn't have turned if off if 
> it had been. There was one of the ERR BP# codes showing 
> because the CONFIG menu wrongly had the KPBF3 installed. I 
> don't know how that happened but I suspect someone got into 
> the CONFIG menu and did that by mistake. Likely that's an 
> unrelated fact. Also, this was a "real" COM port, not a USB 
> adapter. There wasn't any radio control software running on 
> the PC, although N1MM had been running OK with the K3 earlier.
> 
> The Yaesu guy in the crowd loudly gloated that this was yet 
> more evidence that the K3 is a flaky radio. I tried to ignore 
> him while I worked on it. I unplugged it from its COM port 
> and suddenly the radio was fine. Something with the port was 
> seriously disrupting the radio firmware. We proceeded to use 
> a different port.
> 
> No problem now, just a war story and something rather odd 
> that I don't think I've heard before. I'd be interested if 
> anyone had a clue what might have caused it. Details are 
> sketchy and/or missing because I was doing this under 
> pressure to get up and running in the contest, with a Yaesu 
> guy yelling in my ear.
> 
> 73, Carl WS7L
> K3 #486
> 
> 
> 
> 73, Ed - KL7UW, WD2XSH/45
> ======================================
> BP40IQ   500 KHz - 10-GHz   www.kl7uw.com
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