[FARC] Vista's Other Shoe

Sun Oct 19 09:27:07 EDT 2008

I'm not convinced my particular trial with Ham digital applications is Windows Vista as I've had comparable problems with Ham digital applications on Windows XP.   I believe my particular problems are more attributable to what I call Hamware, software written two decades ago for computers with operating systems and hardware architectures from the 386 and 486 era, packaged and offered free as contemporary shareware.   I'm not convinced either that Hamware ran quite right even 20 years ago on the older machines.  

My two-cents is to be wary of installing Ham freeware on a contemporary computer and treat Hamware more as "good intentioned" viruses.  Be careful with this stuff and if you see it on a web site for distribution pay particular attention to minimum system requirements.  For example if a particular piece of Hamware requires at least a 133 MHz. 386 CPU with math co-processor and 128 MB of RAM, you might want to skip this one and move up to something a little more contemporary.  Even Hamware written for Windows 98 or ME is still 10 years old and in computer terms figure 10 years in dog years.  

73
KB3ONM
Kirk

From: K3SKE Dan Szymanski 
Sent: Saturday, October 18, 2008 2:11 PM
To: FARC 
Subject: Re: [FARC] Vista's Other Shoe

It will be a lot more than just the other shoe dropping.

For those of you that may not follow the what Microsoft announces, XP will be supported for at least six more months (do to large corporate and Federal Government users demands). Vista as you now know it will quietly die and be replaced with Windows 7!
Have any of you had a mouse die under the kitchen sink in the area between the sub flooring and the lowest shelf where you store your kitchen cleaning gear? Well assume the mouse is Vista dying quietly and the rest is reality...

And here all the time you thought that it could not possibly get any worse between the economy, health care, jobs and what is left of your 201K (formally 401K) retirement.

Dan
K3SKE
Frederick Cty

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Kirk Talbott 
  To: FARC 
  Sent: Saturday, October 18, 2008 16:56
  Subject: [FARC] Vista's Other Shoe

  While the initial results of installing a new Rigblaster driver for Windows Vista to run PSK31 were positive, the "other shoe" of Windows Vista did drop and squirrelly activity did ensue.  

  Number 1;  the WinPSK software I use has configuration settings for adjusting the computer soundcard receive and transmit volume levels.  When selecting these settings nothing happens, I had no control of these settings.  I did have control when using WinPSK on Windows XP.  

  Number 2; when starting the WinPSK program after a computer shutdown I did not have receive audio and had to exit and restart the WinPSK program in order to get it back.  I had to do this after every reboot of the computer, having to start WinPSK twice in order to get it to work. 

  Number 3; my soundcard, Realtek Audio, has a feature whereby every time I connect or disconnect a cable or device to the soundcard you get a message "a device has been connected" or "a device has been disconnected."  Ordinarily this isn't a problem and is normal for the Realtek Audio soundcard manager software but after every transmission in WinPSK I would get this message, lose receive audio in WinPSK, and have to restart WinPSK again. 

  Number 4; the Realtek Audio soundcard controls for controlling recording and playback audio volume levels had no effect on receive audio in WinPSK.  I had to control receive audio in WinPSK with the radio's volume control.  

  Number 5; Rigblaster instructions for connecting the receive and transmit audio to a computer suggest using the LINE IN and LINE OUT jacks of the soundcard for a desktop computer and using the MIC IN and HEADPHONE jacks for a laptop computer.  I have no LINE OUT jack on my soundcard so I used the SPEAKERS jack. This did not work.  Next, I used the MIC IN and HEADPHONE jacks on my desktop computer as if I were a laptop and this worked but resulted in problems 1,2,3, and 4.  

  It is clear that while the Rigblaster's new driver for Windows Vista probably works, the WinPSK software and other programs on the Rigblaster's software library CD will not.  So, that's enough problems for me to disconnect the Rigblaster and put it away.  I tried.  Additionally the WinPSK program that I used does not have an uninstaller.  If I want to get this program off of my machine I have to go in and set a restore point in the operating system, backup the system registry, then go into the registry and edit out the entry for WinPSK, and then manually delete all the program folders.  What a kluge and especially since I knew better than to try and experiment with it on Windows Vista in the first place.   The Rigblaster and software library CD are headed for the sledgehammer.  

  73
  KB3ONM
  Kirk  

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  _______________________________________________
  FARC mailing list
  FARC at mailman.qth.net
  http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/farc

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  No virus found in this incoming message.
  Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com 
  Version: 8.0.173 / Virus Database: 270.8.1/1731 - Release Date: 10/17/2008 7:01 PM

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_______________________________________________
FARC mailing list
FARC at mailman.qth.net
http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/farc
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/farc/attachments/20081019/6c4cb190/attachment.htm