Ron, Peter and you were correct! I went back and rechecked that the
other radio on one of the other ports of the PCI card was still working
and now it wasn't working. I found a second, unused USB-to-serial
adapter in my garage and installed it. The update went forward
flawlessly in 315 seconds. I used 57.6 K speed and hardware flow
control, but I don't know if that was essential.
I have to conclude that when I originally started the update, the serial
port was not completely failed and there were some data flowing. When I
began switching serial ports, I must have damaged ports by hot plugging,
as Peter suggested. I will go back and recheck everything, but it looks
like that PC card will have to be replaced and, maybe, that other
USB-to-serial adapter that I first tried.
Thanks to all for your help. All seems to be working fine now.
73, Joe
K2XX
Ron Castro wrote:
This still sounds like a COM port problem in the computer. I have
been using a USB to serial port converter for a couple of years and it
has worked perfectly on the my Orion II, a friend's 'original' v. 1x
Orion, my old TS-870, plus numerous other devices.
FWIW, I found that all USB-to-serial converters are based on two
different chips...one seems to work all the time and the other is
flakey, but I don't know which one is which! What I do know is that
the one made by "Cables To Go" works for me every time, so I bought
four of them and keep one everywhere I think I might need one.
BTW, I use this on a Sony P-4 laptop with XP Pro.
Ron N6IE
www.N6IE.com
----- Original Message ----- From: "Joe Giacobello" <k2xx@swva.net>
To: <tentec@contesting.com>
Cc: <jmiller1706@cfl.rr.com>
Sent: Monday, March 02, 2009 6:40 AM
Subject: Re: [TenTec] FW Update Problem w/O2
Jim and Billy, thanks for your inputs, but I'm continuing to have
both an exasperating and mysterious series of problems with the FW
installation.
Apparently, those messages that I was receiving on the Orion screen
were indicative of the FW code being loaded albeit at a very slow
pace. I went back and tried it again several times and on some
occasions the transfer would stop at an early line and the update
software would close. The furthest I got before the transfer stopped
was program flash 266. The speed seemed to be erratic, but it was
generally quite slow. It made little difference whether I used
hardware flow control or none and 57.6K speed or slower. Even though
I usually received the error message that there was no communication
between update software and the Orion, the Orion display showed
I am currently using a multi-serial port PCI card for serial ports.
It has worked flawlessly for several years with a number of different
applications. I tried Jim's suggestion of using a USB-to-serial
adapter and his port settings, but there appeared to be nothing
happening based on no info being displayed on the Orion screen. I
went back to the PCI serial port and now, unlike my earlier
experiences, saw no info displayed on the screen that indicated data
transfer (or anything else for that matter). (So Jim's remedy may
have been working, but I couldn't tell.)
Finally, I ran a serial port analyzer program and it showed that
communication between the port and the Orion was established
practically instantaneously, but then the data transfer slowed to a
snail's pace when the update software started transferring code.
(This is when the error message about loss of communication is
generated. Apparently, it has slowed, but it has not stopped.) One
line of code was being transferred every 6-7 seconds. I decided to
allow the transfer to continue overnight and by this morning about
half the code had been loaded and there are still no messages on the
orion screen.
I haven't the vaguest idea why I'm having this problem. It seems
that most users have had no problems, although a small minority have
had problems similar to mine. I never had any problems loading Orion
I FW with the same setup. Really mysterious.
73, Joe
K2XX
/I had the same problem, others have mentioned it also. I finally
had to buy
a cheap USB to serial converter and use it. I suspect that something
in the
latest indows version doesn't like the older serial card I was using. I
think some folks think it may be a Windows XP or Vista problem. But
also be
sure you have your serial port set to 57600 bps, no parity, hardware
flow
control. You do this in the Windows Device Manager, under COM and LPT
ports.
-----Original Message-----
From: tentec-bounces@contesting.com
[mailto:tentec-bounces@contesting.com]
On Behalf Of Joe Giacobello
Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2009 5:35 PM
To: tentec@contesting.com
Subject: [TenTec] FW Update Problem w/O2
I have just been trying to install FW 2.041XL and have major problems.
After starting the update, I first get an error message indicating that
there's no communication with the radio. If I repeat the update one or
two more times, I finally get a message on the Orion screen that says
"Erase Flash" which then switches to "Program Flash 1." The number in
that message continuously increments every 10 seconds or so, but nothing
else happens. I can stop the numbers from incrementing by just shutting
down the update software. So there must be some communication between
the software and the O2.
I've tried both master resets and RAM clears w/o any effect, and I also
re-downloaded the FW file. I can't even re-install the original FW.
Never had problems updating the original Orion.
Anyone seen anything similar or have any thoughts on what might be
going on?/
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