[Ham-Mac] Help Needed With Setting Up Multimode

[Chris Smolinski]

>On Jan 31, 2004, at 9:35 PM, Chris Smolinski wrote:
>
>>>On Jan 31, 2004, at 7:14 PM, Chris Smolinski wrote:
>>>
>>>>>On Jan 31, 2004, at 6:04 PM, Chris Smolinski wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>>>It starts as soon as you select the serial port in MultiMode, 
>>>>>>>>or as soon as you plug everything together?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Chris - as soon as I select the serial port.  As long as I 
>>>>>>>don't select a serial port for PTT, I can receive fine with 
>>>>>>>everything hooked up.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Hmm... while I don't see that here, I have one suggestion, try 
>>>>>>selecting the port, quitting MultiMode, then running it again, 
>>>>>>and see if the port behaves itself.
>>>>>
>>>>>Chris - I turned off the radio, selected the port, quit 
>>>>>Multimode, opened Multimode again, turned on the radio and no 
>>>>>transmit on receive.  So far, so good - provided I hook 
>>>>>everything and select the port before turning on the radio. 
>>>>>But, I then selected transmit mode and the radio stayed in 
>>>>>receive.  Since I hadn't tried the transmit mode before, I don't 
>>>>>know if there is something else I'm supposed to do to transmit.
>>>>
>>>>Nope, all you need to do is select the serial port, and then when 
>>>>you select transmit mode in MultiMode, it asserts the DTR 
>>>>handshake line on the serial port.
>>>
>>>Chris - well, nothing happens.  Also, if I turn the radio on 
>>>before opening Multimode, the radio goes into transmit when 
>>>Multimode opens - even if Multimode is in idle.  Very strange.
>>
>>It sounds like your interface is not using the handshake line to 
>>control the rig, perhaps the TX data line?
>
>If that is the case (I don't know at this point), are there other 
>Multimode settings I should be changing? Or will Multimode not work 
>if the TX data line is used to control the rig?
>

MultiMode only toggles the handshake line on the serial port to 
change the PTT setting. If you have a serial breakout box, you can 
plug it in, and see what is happening.  For example, I have one 
connected now, running MultiMode 4.5.0 (latest release) and when I go 
to transmit, I see lines 4 and 20 assert. These are RTS and DTR 
respectively. Presumably the 8 pin to 25 pin cable i have puts the 
handshake line on both of these pins. This is using a Keyspan USA-28X 
dual USB/serial adapter. You could of course just grab a standard 
voltmeter, and check the level of each RS232 line to see what (if 
anything) is happening, then compare that to the docs for your 
interface unit. A google search should easily turn up a rs232 25 pin 
pinout listing of all the lines.

One problem I found with at least the early rigblasters (no idea if 
they fixed it) is that they blindly assumed that the output swing of 
the serial port handshake lines would be +/-12 volts, causing them to 
not work on the Mac which uses +/-5 volt swings. Which is quite silly 
since the actual RS232 spec goes down to +/-3 volt swings. But since 
it works on a PC that is all that matters...


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Chris Smolinski
Black Cat Systems
http://www.blackcatsystems.com