[LOGic] Weird serial connection flakiness

[Bill W5WVO]

I've been having this weird problem with the serial connection between my new Dell laptop and my TS-B2000 via LOGic7/8. (LOGic7 and LOGic8 both manifest this problem in exactly the same way.) The symptoms are: (a) failure of the LOGic-Radio serial connection to properly initialize on LOGic start-up (99% of the time), and (b) losing serial connectivity with the radio while using LOGic (at seemingly random intervals measured in tens of minutes or hours). Clicking "Reset radio and rotor interfaces" always establishes or re-establishes connectivity -- for a while.

This issue seems to be specific to both LOGic and to this computer or its OS. I didn't have the problem with the desktop machine (now retired) and the same radio. The desktop ran Windows 2000 Pro. The laptop runs Windows XP Home. And I don't have the problem using other radio software on the same laptop computer with the same radio at the same settings, like the Kenwood TS-2000 control software, the 3rd-party memory mapper software, or UIView APRS software. The serial connection with all these programs is 100% reliable as far as I can tell. 

I have no other radios to control with this serial port and LOGic, so that's one variable I've been unable to characterize.

My engineering background tells me that something is right on the margin of being able to work. Marginality can be either in the voltage domain or in the time domain, and it sure seems from these observations that this has to be timing, since the hardware layer is the same in all configurations, those that work reliably and the one (LOGic) that is flaky.

Two "obvious" things that this is not:

(a) It is NOT transmit RF getting into the radio's or computer's serial logic and resetting it. I tested for this extensively. In fact, failure of the serial connection almost always occurs when the radio and LOGic have been idle for some amount of time. (There must be a clue in that, but I haven't yet figured out what it is.)

(b) It is NOT too fast a baud rate or too fast a polling frequency. Changing the serial port interface settings both on the radio and in LOGic have NO EFFECT on this problem. I have changed baud rate, polling frequency, and stop bits. The symptoms are always the same, regardless of how any of these parameters are adjusted to slower speeds.

I'm getting sick of constantly reinitializing the serial connection in LOGic. (Though it's really nice to have a way to do this without relaunching the program!) I've talked with Dennis, and he has no clue what could be causing this behavior. Has anyone seen these symptoms before in any LOGic configuration?

Bill / W5WVO