Using a number of helpful suggestions from posted and direct
responses to my recent inquiry about problems running a KAM on RTTY
with Writelog, I have succeeded in getting the combination to work.
There appear to be 3 sets of serial COM parameters whose setting can
affect the operation. The combination that works on my 130 MHz
Pentium under Win95 with the KAM (not KAM+) on COM1 with a serial
cable that has all 5serial pins wired is:
1. PC CommPort (under control panels/system/port, or just control
panels /port for some systems ) set to default which is 9600,1,N,8
and None flow control. (But baud rate and flow control do not appear
to matter). FIFO (advanced) is ON with moderately high values.
2. Writelog.ini under PORT has COM1 set to 9600,N,8,1, (NOTE: not
9600,N,8,1,x)
3. KAM is preset to ABAUD 9600 (XFLOW is ON and MONITOR is ON, at
least before initialization)
It was found that if FIFO is OFF, Transmitted characters are
sometimes skipped as displayed in the KAM window and apparently also
skipped on the air (see XXX).
Most, but not all, of the time on startup the RTTY window is inert
and the KAM panel display lights act like it is not in the right
mode. If you then select FSK-Norm (or transmit a signal) the window
starts behaving correctly and the KAM is put in the right state and
all TX characters are displayed.
It is not clear just which of the settings is critical. For a while
it was working fine with Xon/Xoff for PC flow and WL.ini with
9600,N,8,1,x but when I shut down and did a full cold restart, it
failed. It initialized ok but after getting the window active no TX
characters were displayed at all even though it seemed to key the
transmitter ok based on the length of an additional transmission.
This may be related to my use of the fully wired serial cable which
KAM uses for Hardware flow control. Perhaps with a lesser 3 wire
serial cable, that does not support Hardware control (CTS/RTS), the
Xon/Xoff may be needed as the flow control method (that is, with a
9600,N,8,1,x in the WL.ini file). With the 5 wire cable and
Xon/Xoff active, there may be flow control conflicts
In the course of my approximately 60 trials (my lost weekend) with
various parameter selections, I had thought I used the same setting
that are currently successful, but it failed to display any TX
characters. Either I was getting woozy or it may be due to some KAM
parameters that were incidentally set since I went though several
rounds of pre-setting the KAM using the WF1B RTTY software with
provides access to the KAM command functions. At times I just set
the baud rate (ABAUD 9600) and switched back to Writelog with no
other changes, and at other times I did a RESTORE D followed by ABAUD
9600 and PERM to use the default factory settings. Bottom line is
I'm not certain of all the current KAM settings and I'm not willing
the risk going back to not working again to find out - at least until
I recover. (I think they are the original factory setting except for
ABAUD 9600). Note that every piece of KAM software seems to alter
the KAM parameters, both on startup and shutdown, although it does
return to the last PERMed values when turned off.
I once attempted to keep all parameters the same except for using
ABAUD 2400 rather than 9600 for all 3 settings. It never was able to
initialize the KAM using this 2400 in spite of the fact that in my
pre-posting days, this was the baud rate at which I first found the
skipped TX characters! ( Note that AA5AN reports using 4800
successfully with a KAM+.)
Other combinations may work, but my work here is done.
Thanks to W2WG , VE6RAJ, AA5AU, AA4NU, ZC4DW, K5DJ and Jay.
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