Denny's right, the Winkey is the way to go. However, for those just
getting their feet wet in CW contesting, N1MM Logger does a pretty good job
of doing the "essentially impossible", as he describes it. I used N1MM for
a year with parallel port keying, on an el-cheapo Dell Dimension 2400 with
512 MB of RAM and Windows XP. After I got my first Winkey (largely to be
able to interface a paddle with the program) I found I could not tell by
listening whether I was using the Winkey or parallel port CW. There were
absolutely NO hiccups, malformed characters or choppiness with the simple
parallel port interface.
73, Pete N4ZR
At 08:18 AM 7/31/2007, Dennis OConnor wrote:
>WIndows XP cannot dedicate an I/O port with no interrupts and will
>continue time slicing all serial, parallel, and usb I/O (even with no
>other programs running, due to internal interrupt calls) Smooth CW is
>essentially impossible from software to I/O port due to the CPU constantly
>interrupting the CW stream to service interrupt calls... It is not the
>fault of the logging program but an architecture constraint of the cpu...
> I am running N1MM currently and using it to drive an external keyer...
> I am using the Winkey2 USB keyer and have been happy with it... But the
> other keyers should work also, Microham, etc... What happens here is the
> logging program squirts an ascii sentence to the keyer... The keyer cpu
> then handles all the timing and keying chores without being interrupted
> by other tasks... I suspect Wrotelog will work in a similar fashion with
> an external keyer...
>
> denny / k8do
>
>
>---------------------------------
>Got a little couch potato?
>Check out fun summer activities for kids.
>_______________________________________________
>CQ-Contest mailing list
>CQ-Contest@contesting.com
>http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest
_______________________________________________
CQ-Contest mailing list
CQ-Contest@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest
|