[Elecraft] K3 comms with K3 Utility Cause K3 processor hang??

[Phil Hystad]

OK, I am not sure if I can describe this simply but I will try but first let me describe
the symptoms of the result.

I am waiting for a CW Traffic net to get started on 80 meters tonight.  Just to make sure everything is hunky dory I give my paddle a two-dit hit so as to make sure SWR is OK and my meter reads the right power level.  But, this time, nothing.  While I am sitting there pondering what happened then there are two brief dits transmitted.  Big delay.  About 3 seconds I guess (did not have my watch ready so a guess).  So, I did this again, one dot, just one single dot.  Nothing.  In fact, nothing at all, I waited about 10 seconds.  Then, I tried again and one dot comes out after about 2 seconds.

So, the symptoms are a delay in the keyer responding to my paddle.  I powered down the K3 and started it up again.  And this time, all functions work perfectly.  Paddle and Keyer are happy with each other.

Possible cause...

Just before I started this sequence described above, I started the K3 utility and mainly because I wanted to watch how the code translate does with the net participants.  I noticed that the K3 utility did not auto-start as usual and when I tried the comms port test it just timed out.  Yes, it was the correct port.  But, I ignored the K3 utility and then focused on the net which was starting and this is when all the trouble with the delay in the keyer happened.

After the net, I stopped the K3 Utility and restarted it and could not reproduce the problem.  This time, it came on up just fine without any issues.  I am figuring some weird initialization process that got out of sync for the utility but I am not sure what happened to the K3 as this has never happened before.

And, I have no idea how to reproduce it but I am curious if anyone else has seen a similar problem where something my cause the firmware to maybe get into some state where the keyer is not getting any cpu time or not responding to interrupts or something resulting in a timing delay and thus the behavior I saw.

Curiosity only as everything works fine now.

System details:  K3 is up to date on all released firmware updates.  K3 utility is the latest version.  Computer is iMac running OS X (Mavericks version with all latest updates).

73, phil, K7PEH