Hi, Duane-
You and several others have mentioned the "two lines short" problem. I
don't see this on the load, but I do see it on the verify. The utility at
the beginning of the verify reports the same number of lines found in the
Orion as it reported when the code was loaded. However the verification
process gets to around 100 lines short of the total number and pauses for a
few seconds. Then it goes up to 2 lines short of the earlier reported number
and stops, saying radio and code verification were successful on one panel
and that the radio and the file did not match in the second sometimes
obscured panel--and odd way of doing things.
Anyway, after trying the load of 2.062 a few more times with no change I
thought it would be interesting to go back to 1.375 whatever--the last beta
variation built "for one specific customer" I can't remember the last
digits as I am away from the shack--maybe b5. Anyway, I got the same
result. The verify had observed the same number of lines in the Orion as
the loader had tried to put there, but as it ticked through the lines it
stopped about 100 lines short, paused for maybe 5 seconds (this reminds me a
lot of the old DOS floppy format when a disk had bad sectors and DOS
repeatedly tried to format them before declaring them bad and moving on),
and then quit two lines short of the proper number and found the code and
load did not match.
I know the loader changed when V1 was capped. I wonder if the old loader
would do the same thing. As I recall the V1 loader was not happy loading a
V2 file, though.
One of the responders to me mentioned seeing a "2 lines ignored" message at
the conclusion of loading. I haven't seen that, but the "2 lines" seems to
be a common thread.
73
Bob W2WG
-----Original Message-----
From: Duane Calvin [mailto:ac5aa1@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, June 17, 2007 2:24 PM
To: 'Robert Carroll'
Subject: RE: [orion565] RE: Orion V2.062a freezes
Quick answer to your last question, Bob - no, I think they fixed a number of
the issues of the Orion 1 with the Orion II. A friend ordered one new a
year or so ago, and was going to be out of the country when it arrived, so
he had them ship it to me to have me do the first month breakin and check it
out. I was pretty impressed with how it operated, but ended up sticking
with my Orion 1. I couldn't see spending $1800 to get a prettier op panel
and some minor improvements. Now, it would seem, they've got the better end
of the deal. Also, thanks for explaining the verification program - I think
I ran it a long time ago, but didn't remember it checking off the codes of
line in the rig. Mine also stopped loading 2.062a about two lines short of
the purported total.
73, Duane
Duane Calvin, AC5AA
Austin, Texas
www.ac5aa.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Carroll [mailto:w2wg@comcast.net]
Sent: Sunday, June 17, 2007 12:46 PM
To: 'Duane Calvin'
Subject: RE: [orion565] RE: Orion V2.062a freezes
Hi, Duane-
I'm using a genuine UART based Rocketport with of all things, a Windows
certified driver. It's basically a commercial unit for business operations.
I would be suspicious of a USB derived port because of the uncontrolled
latency and because of having to have code explicitly supporting the mode
used--for instance most of them will not handle "5 but" FSK transfers.
The verify facility actually steps the Orion through its bytes--you can see
it count them off just like when loading an update, and before starting asks
you for a file. I suppose other interpretations of what it does are
possible because as far as I can tell there is no description of it, but it
sure looks to me like it is reading the Orion flash and making a comparison
with the file you gave it.
I've had the problem you describe back in 1.372 and 1.375b3 days. It seemed
as though you could bring things back by having the Orion do something else
and then coming back to what you were trying to do.
Let me know if you find anything. My Orion problems are chewing up a lot of
time. Am I imagining it or do only Orion 1 owners seem to be having this
type of problem? I see some Orion 2 owners quibbling about how certain
parts of the firmware perform, but I don't seem to recall them saying the
rig was mildly insane.
73
Bob W2WG
-----Original Message-----
From: Duane Calvin [mailto:ac5aa1@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, June 17, 2007 12:55 PM
To: 'Robert Carroll'
Subject: RE: [orion565] RE: Orion V2.062a freezes
Hi Bob,
Just out of curiosity, are you cabled to your Orion with a serial
(RS232) cable, or through a USB -> Serial converter? Also, I don't believe
the verification utility verifies what is in the rig against a file, I
believe it verifies the structure of the file you received. I could be
completely wrong on this as it's been a while since I used it.
Sounds like, from another's response that the utility may not be
working correctly as he also didn't verify. I will check on this later
today. My Orion I has, on extremely rare occasions, had a problem with the
main RX not seeming to have any sensitivity on a single band. Switching to
another band will show good sensitivity. Going back (to 17m) will s how it
dead. But maybe prop is dead that day? On those very rare occasions, I
have had a power cycle restore it. I've had no other issues other than the
fuzzy audio in 2.062a that sounds like RF is being overdriven into an A/D
converter.
73, Duane
Duane Calvin, AC5AA
Austin, Texas
www.ac5aa.com
-----Original Message-----
From: orion565@yahoogroups.com [mailto:orion565@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of Robert Carroll
Sent: Sunday, June 17, 2007 9:28 AM
To: orion565@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [orion565] RE: Orion V2.062a freezes
Mark-
You caused my brain to unthaw a little-thanks. From time to time various
Orion owners (Orion 1 owners, I think) have reported not some operational
shortcoming in the firmware, but some oddball behavior or outright failure
of the Orion. I have been one of those from time to time. Other users
vehemently swear they have had their Orion 1 playing for years with no such
problems, perhaps with one of the V1 releases. Some of them think those of
us who are reporting problems are perhaps insane malcontents intent on
bashing TT. You sure see that on some reflectors. Assuming neither "side"
is insane or lying, how can this be? How can the folks reporting problems
be having such a variety of different problems? Your message resonated with
me and shook loose some cobwebs while I am struggling through a number of
weird things with 2062A ranging from one day the receiver sounding like a
champ to the next day having it break up and rasp on cw signals unless you
crank back the gain so far you almost can't make up the loss with audio
gain. Frequent loss of RIT, loss of sensitivity in one rx or another,
having audio on the speaker and not on the phones or vice versa, and
indicated mike level in the hundreds of thousands (got a nice camera shot of
this one) etc. Yesterday I had another strange one-the remote pod for the
first time was not able to control the RIT (my panel RIT is going through a
rough stretch). When I set the pod to control VFO A, it did so, but
changing settings back to VFO B, RIT, BW etc still resulted in the knob
changing the VFO A tuning. Very odd, and a first for me.
I don't want to make this too wordy, but please accept my assurances that I
have a clean supply, analog, nothing else on the supply, good ground to the
negative terminal, line scoped to be clean of trash to 100MHz, no AM
stations nearby, no ground loops, ferrites on everything touching the Orion,
no problems with any other transceiver, etc. This place is as clean as a
clean room, and many of the problems I see are there at power up-no
transmission involved-and most clear on a power cycle-or so it appears.
This Orion has also had many, many RAM clears, Master Resets, user memory
clears, firmware reloads etc. It seems to go in cycles of working well for
a while, going through a period of problems, behaving, and repeating. I
have always suspected defects in the firmware and have been waiting since
the early days of the V1 releases to have the next release be perfect.
Anyway, enough of that.
But when I went into the shack this morning I had been thinking about your
message and a couple of others from yesterday, So I did something I have
not done lately, though I have done it many times in the V1 past with no
problem-I did a memory verify via the loader utility. This utility is a
little misleading in that it ends with a "verify succeeded" or "verify
completed" info panel, giving you the warm fuzzies. But behind that I found
another panel saying the firmware loaded did not match the file specified.
So I wondered, could I have verified against the wrong file-something other
than 2062A? To make sure I took a series of camera shots and screen
captures. Nope, the Orion thought it had 2.062A loaded and I had verified
against the intended file. I went through all the resets twice, cleared
everything including the filters, suspecting that somehow the Orion had been
corrupted in some way during recent operation. Nope, the load did not match
the file. Next I thought perhaps the Orion flash had been corrupted somehow
(it does happen very rarely in a PC, and there were some viruses that were
able to change flash bytes a few years back). So I went through all the
resets (overkill), reloaded the file I had (apparently successfully) did
another round of resets and clears, and ran the verify utility again-and the
verification failed in just the same way-file and load do not match. This
DOES NOT shed any light on whether the ruf file I have contains any errors
(unlikely as Windows is decent but not foolproof in detecting download
corruption and is decent at detecting whether a file has been damaged) , but
it DOES show that the ruf file is not being loaded properly. Of course
there is the possibility that the loader utility is damaged, but I think
that is very, very unlikely, though worth checking.
You might think this particular Orion has a hardware problem and needs to go
back to the mothership. It was at the mothership a couple of weeks back for
a look at the ever elusive RIT problem, but for a full-monty lockup I could
not cure. TT did cure it with a RAM clear/Master Reset (no idea why I could
not as I tried several times) loaded 2059 I believe and played with the RIT
of and on for more than a day. As luck would have it, the RIT never failed,
and according to TT they have never seen a failure on a unit in their hands.
They did test the hardware and found no issues. I must say they have been
responsive and helpful as I have continued to report problems, and I suspect
we will make progress on what ails my quirky beast.
But I would suggest that those unlucky ones of you who are having problems
with 2062 or other loads might consider the possibility that it may not be
errors in the new firmware as such. It may be that what you have loaded is
not what you think has been loaded, and depending on where the defect is in
flash you may get symptoms ranging from irritating but harmless to a problem
in a critical location that results in a full freeze up. Going back to a
previous version may produce improved results not because the new firmware
has a bug in it but because any errant loaded bytes are now in places that
have not bitten yet or because you were able to complete an error free load.
I have tried a reload three times this AM after stumbling into this issue,
and I suspect a fourth time won't improve things. On the other hand, I
don't seem to be suffering fatal errors, so I consider myself lucky.
In the meantime, if you are having a problem try the verify utility and let
service@tentec.com know if you are seeing a verify fail. I will be back in
touch with them on Monday. This could be an "I'm the only one" problem, but
it could possibly be an explanation of problems reported by others. Perhaps
my flash is bad-but I would have thought that would have been caught at TT.
73
Bob W2WG
_____
From: orion565@yahoogroups.com [mailto:orion565@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of idrillballs
Sent: Saturday, June 16, 2007 12:49 PM
To: orion565@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [orion565] RE: Orion V2.062a freezes
Enzo I had a similar problem with 2.060b. My entire front panel would
lock-up after a few minutes when changing bands. Power the radio off
then back on and it starts all over again. I did every type of reset
and still the same problem. My problem went away when I did the "
Verify Program " option in the Orion Update Utility. I have no idea
why that worked. It seems that every time Ten Tec comes out with a
new firmware update it always has an effect on something else. I feel
there are some hardware issues as well since certain Orion's are
affected in different ways depending on what firmware release is
installed in your radio . Good Luck.....73
Mark
WA2MO
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