Well, I've gone from being in a pickle to having drowned in the bottom of the
vat. After four days and long nights to 2am, I have never been able to get the
rig/pc to work properly. Friday afternoon I gave up because I was so tired
that, even if I could get it to work, I didn't have the energy to work the
contest.
Here's what I've been through. Thanks to help from many of you, I got the
serial interface cable to work by disabling my UPS. Some day in the far future
I'll look at restoring that functionality. Since I have almost the same rig
setup, I went to K9JY's web site and followed his installation/setup
instructions, to a point, namely the hookup between the PC and the rig. I
don't
have a phone patch so I went to the Writelog manual which said to connect
between Aux Out on the sound card to the mike in on the rig. Before I made
that last hookup, I was able to use the Shift+F2 keys to record SSB messages,
and when I hit the F2 key, the message played back over my desktop speakers.
For information, I have a basic Yaesu FT-1000MP MK-V and a Heil ProSet Plus.
My
audio system is a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum. Yep, that's a
mouthful. It consists of a PCI sound card and an audio "drive" inserted
through
a drive bay in the tower. It's connected to the sound card with a Firewire
cable and a AD_EXT ribbon.
Unlike K9JY, I don't have a phone patch. So I went to the Writelog manual.
Per
the instructions, I hooked up the mike to one of the Aux Out plugs, but it
wouldn't work. VOX wouldn't key and MOX did nothing. That's when I started
diddling with settings and connections. Before long, pressing the functions
keys resulted in nothing, mike still didn't work. The rig's meter was set to
read IC and SWR. Eventually, when I pressed the MOX button, the transmitter
was
keyed and the final amp collector current portion of the meter (IC) was showing
something being transmitted at a low level, I know not what. VOX usually did
not work, but occasionally did the same thing as when on the MOX setting as
soon
as I plugged it in. Speaking into the mike in either setting resulted in
nothing. I did not have the isolation transformers installed because Radio
Shack was out of stock and there are no other electronics parts stores around.
After all this time, I finally noticed the CAT light on the front of the rig
was
blinking. According to the manual, the light comes on when a command
instruction is received from the PC and then goes out. I assume the blinking
is
caused by the polling selector on Writlog's port setup page. Turn polling off
and the light goes off.
Heard enough? Stick around, it gets better as I slowly sink into the pickle
vat. During the initial setup, K9JY describes how to mute all the playback
controls, and then go to the WriteLog Sound Mixer Level Control. In the column
for Receive Selection, pick Aux In. That's fine, except it wasn't one of my
options. There were eight or so options including Wave, MIDI Synth, Line-In
2/Mic 2, SPDIF In, and, best of all, "What U Hear", which is not listed in the
Windows setup as a playback option but rather as a record option. Line In is
listed in Windows as a playback option.
Okay. I've had enough. Going to start all over. I uninstalled Writelog.
Then
ran Symantec's Win Doctor to, theoretically, remove all registry entries
referring to WriteLog. Reinstalled Writelog but quickly discovered that the
old
WRITELOG.INI file was still in the Windows directory with all my final
settings.
Also, the only sub-directories (sorry, I can't bring myself to say "Folders")
that were installed were Contest and Program. Wave Files and Audio Recording
directories weren't installed. I manually installed them, and in Port Setup
told to look for .WAV files in the default location. I tried to record a
message for the F2 key. However, when I pressed F2, I got an error message
that
said it couldn't find MSG2.WAV file in c:\WriteLog\Wave Files. A search of the
entire hard drive couldn't find it anywhere.
I'm on my second or third day by now, and my PO level was fighting my
frustration level for dominance. I uninstalled WriteLog again and ran Win
Doctor again. It said it corrected over 160 registry entries involving
WriteLog. Also deleted WRITELOG.INI manually. Then I went in to edit the
registry manually. Found over 100 references to WriteLog still there, and step
by laborious step deleted every frigging one of them. Reinstalled WriteLog
again. All sub-directories were now installed. I could record a message and
play it back, but had no idea how it sounded because my desk top speakers were
now disabled and nothing was going to get them working again. Meter IC
readings
were very low. Same problems with the mike functions on VOX and MOX.
I delved into the documentation for the sound card and discovered the plug
configurations:
Line-level analog Line input via stereo jack
Mono Microphone analog input via stereo jack
Three line-level analog outputs via 4-pole minijacks: Front Left, Front
Right, Rear Left, Rear Right, Side Right, Center, Subwoofer and Side Left
channels
Stereo headphone (32-ohm load) support on Line Out 1.
On the front of the audio drive there are the following plugs:
Two RCA jacks for coaxial SPDIF input and output
Headphone output and volume control with auto detection via 6.35 mm
(1/4-inch) stereo jack
Shared line-level analog Line/Microphone input (Line In 2/Mic In 2) via
6.35 mm (1/4-inch) stereo jack. Shared input selectable via knob with gain
control for microphone.
Two mini MIDI female connectors for MIDI input and output
Two RCA jacks for Auxiliary 2 input
Two optical connectors for optical SPDIF input and output
FireWire (IEEE 1394) connector for FireWire (IEEE 1394) compatible devices
My connections used a stereo cable for the Aux In, the standard Heil mono mike
cable for Mike In, and a mono cable from Aux Out 2 to the Yaesu adapter for the
Heil. I later tried a stereo to mono adapter on the sound card for this
connection. No difference.
Friday afternoon I gave up and restored the hard drive to before I started all
this crapola. I then put it back in pristine condition by, amongst other
things, manually editing the registry, for the third time, to remove all
references to WriteLog, plus Spybot and Adaware. The latter two I had
previously uninstalled in favor of a new, outstanding spyware program called
CounterSpy. Ran Win Doctor several times, and even optimized the hard drive.
I'm tempted to echo Quack's comments on Tower Talk that I intend to stay drunk
until I get this thing fixed, but I don't think I could afford it.
Before I start all over again I would appreciate any advice, including
pyrotechnics. To the 99.9% of you who are up and running and having a
wonderful
time, I apologize for using all this bandwidth, and I hate you. (Don't really
mean that.) To the other .1%, let's go somewhere and get drunk together before
we start any other silly project of a similar nature.
73, Bob W7BJ
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