Re: [Xlog-discussion] v1.6 adventures & comments

[Joop Stakenborg]

Op woensdag 14-11-2007 om 23:07 uur [tijdzone -0500], schreef Martin
Ewing - AA6E:
> Well, I upgraded to Fedora 8 mainly to try xlog 1.6.  (Bad move, but 
> that's a story for another day.)
> 
> The good news.  Xlog compiles and installs correctly.
> 
> First run gave a horrible crash dump.  After some head scratching, I 
> turned on my rig (Orion) and tried again.  All is well this time!  This 
> was a Hamlib/Orion problem. (I'm the HL Orion maintainer.)  It does not 
> seem to happen with other choices for rig type.  Although the software 
> turns to molasses if there's no response on the serial port.
> 
> I am using Hamlib from CVS.  I found and fixed one problem -- invalid 
> return when get_info returns null.  Now xlog does not crash when the rig 
> is off, but xlog hangs up with a mostly uninitialized window until you 
> turn the rig on.  I'll look at it some more.  Maybe Hamlib itself should 
> have a better way to signal if there is no rig available. A non-blocking 
> serial read might be a good idea. And/or threads. ;-)
> 

Glad you found it... In the past I had horrible crashes with hamlib when
I first experimented with the TS-870 code.

> (I'm running Fedora 8 - Linux 2.6.23.1-49.fc8 #1 SMP i686 athlon i386; 1 
> GB RAM; Athlon XP 2000+.)
> 
> Here are some other comments, besides the start-up issue:
> 
> 1. Clicking Mode button produces mode setting correctly equal to Orion's 
> state for USB, CW (if Orion LCW or UCW), and FM.
> 
> However, Orion's LSB -> xlog USB;
> AM -> (unrecognized - leaves mode unchanged);
> FSK -> (unrecognized - leaves mode unchanged)

Looks like the hamlib modes are not correct. Can you please check with
rigctl? Use 'rigctl --list' to find your model number, next call rigctl
with the '-m' option and hit 'm' at the "Rig command:" prompt for every
mode.

> 
> I would suggest that LSB should map to LSB at least, and recognizing AM 
> and FSK would be good as well.  What do the ADIF files want?
> 
> 2. Clicking Power button gives a result between 0 and 256.  Hamlib 
> returns a floating value between 0.0 and 1.0.  For a 100 watt rig like 
> mine, that should be 0 - 100 W of course.  Ideally, there would be a 
> preference setting for max. power that would be used to scale the 
> result.  In any case, 256 can't be right for most of us!
> 

Okay, I need to check this. I have had a similar report a while back,
but I can't seem to find the bug. It works okay with my kenwood rig.

> 3. (no great importance)  The S-meter scale does not correspond too well 
> with Hamlib's numbers.  Xlog's meter seems to have a long time constant, 
> and I haven't tried to calibrate it seriously.  But -6 dB (S8) from 
> Hamlib seems to give S9 on xlog's meter.  It seems to indicate 1 S-unit 
> high over the range I've checked.
> 

Check the calbration table for your rig. It's inside the code for your
rig somewhere...

> Hope this helps!
> 
> 73 Martin AA6E
> 


Thanks very much for the report, it is appreciated!

Regards,
Joop PG4I