[Lowfer] Blue Screen of Death Argo/Spectran

[Rye Gewalt]

It appears that the CPU was a significant part of the problem. I pulled the
Cyrix and plugged in the 133 Pentium and things seem a lot more stable.  At
least the system stayed up all of last night -- which was uncommon with the
Cyrix.  I'll have more time to play with it over the weekend.  I do know that
the processor utilization would spike to 100% on a periodic basis with the Cyrix
-- I will check the Pentium over the weekend.  I did muddy the waters with a new
sound card earlier yesterday before I changed CPU, but for the brief period that
the Cyrix was in the system I experienced the same problems as the with the old
sound card.

Now I have to start working on some of the issues surrounding interference from
the monitor.  I suspect that the best thing to do is to keep the dammed thing
turned off during unattended receiving sessions.  It appears that the major
interference is from the high power circuits of the monitor itself since turning
it off seems to work well -- which implies that the low power computer/video
board stuff isn't radiating nearly as much.  And, of course, the monitor related
signals only effect parts of the band.  Great fun, this.......

Thanks again for your help.

NC is banging in here again this morning.

Regards
Rye K9LCJ
Springfield, VA

DTX wrote:

> Rye,
>
> I stopped using the Cyrix cpus many years ago when I discovered how poorly
> their Math Co-processor functions were implemented.  Can your motherboard
> support other CPUs?  Do you have the documentation to set the jumpers and
> such for the various clocks, multipliers and stuff?  If so, and you want to
> try to change the cpu, I have an Intel 90Mhz cpu sitting around here out of
> the motherboard (long since gone, don't know why the cpu didn't go with it
> ;-) that I could send you for a $1.10 postage.  On math intensive apps, it
> will run circles around the Cyrix, maybe 4 or 5 times better even at the
> lower clock speed.
>
> Gary WA6DTX
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Rye Gewalt
> To: lowfer
> Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2002 2:49 AM
> Subject: [Lowfer] Blue Screen of Death Argo/Spectran
>
> I wonder how much computer is required to make Spectran/Argo work well.  I
> know that both are computationally intensive and suspect I may be asking too
> much of my old 133MHz Cyrix machine (96K memory)  that I use for low
> frequency monitoring.
> Both ARGO and Spectran run great -- except when they crash to the dreaded
> "Blue Screen of Death" .  The blue screen error data seems arbitrary so
> there is no clue there and it's hard to reproduce the failures.  Sometimes
> the computer will run all night and other times it crashes just after I
> leave the room -- in true Murphy fashion.
> Here are some of my thoughts...
> 1   Thought it might be the Windows 95 so totally formatted disk and loaded
> new 98/ME into a system with just ARGO and Spectran.  Same results.
> 2.  Thought it might be video drivers (Stealth 2000 3D) and got current
> versions from web.  Same results.
> 3.  It may not be enough machine for the Job....  but it performs well on
> other stuff (but not so computationally intensive)
> I am using an old Plug and Play SoundBlaster 16 (CT2940) and wonder if it
> may be the problem.  I think I may stop at the local computer hack store and
> buy and new PCI card with all of the current drivers etc. since they seem to
> sell OEM Creative cards for about $30.  Creative calls the CT2940 a legacy
> card so maybe it's the problem.  I know that setting up some of the older
> cards was a real  pain with regard to interrupts and addressing.  I think
> that the new ones are more disciplined.
> Perhaps somebody else out there has worked this problem and might have some
> experience to share.  I do know that both ARGO and Spectran run great on my
> bigger machines -- so it's not a problem with the software.
> Otherwise I am having a great second season LFing and am finally starting to
> hear things.
> Regards All
> Rye K9LCJ
> Springfield, VA
>
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