Digital Interface to My FT-950- part 4

 This has been a long journey but now My set up seems to be working well. I've discussed the many hurdles getting to this point so onward with the settings discussion. I have a Yaesu FT-950  , Yaesu SCU-17 digital interface and a Dell Windows 11 laptop. The SCU-17 interfaces to the radio with a serial DB-9 cable,6 pin DIN plug and to the PC with a USB interface. It needs drivers installed for the virtual comm ports on the Laptop and the recommended are from Silicon Labs- dual CP210x USB to UART bridge driver which can be found on their website.

 After drivers are installed the ports need to be configured and for My application I have set them both, the enhanced port and standard port to 38400 baud,8,none and 2 stop bits.It is also a good idea to turn power management off for these ports and that is found under device manager and comm port settings menus on the laptop. I also have the FT-950 setup to mirror the laptop comm ports -38400 and CAT TOT-1000. The rest of the CAT menu and RTTY choices are left at default. I also have flow control set to none on laptop comm ports but I'm not totally sure this is correct--but it works for now.

The SCU-17 internal jumper I have set to PTT-DTR and FSK-RTS. This is not the default setting but  will work as long as EXTFSK64 mirrors this setting.I changed jumper setting with old Windows 10 PC trying to see if that change would help it to key radio and left it that way.

 The next program is MMTTY ver 1.68a. There might be a newer version but this one works OK.I found the most important parameter using FSK is making sure under the AFC/ATC/PLL menu that shift is set to FSK and of course PTT is using EXTFSK64. The soundcard also needs to reference  both TX and RX the USB audio codec.

N1MM is the logging/contesting program I use and it interfaces with MMTTY as its Digital engine. Using CAT from the radio requires the enhanced com mport and PTT/FSK the standard. These settings need to match and for My setup Com 3 is CW/other- 38400,n,8,2 with DTR and RTS on. My com 4 which is the standard port is set to Digital with DTR-PTT and RTS -CW.

 With all these programs there are many variations for ease of use and depending on hardware many settings. I read the manuals for each one and adjusted these accordingly. The above settings seem to be the ones needed using a Yaesu FT-950 ,SCU-17 and a Windows 11 laptop. Hope this helps. I might need to edit this description some so check back later....

73--Tim

  

Digital Interface to My Ft -950 part 3

 The previous parts 1 & 2 I discussed My old interface and the reasons for purchasing a new digital interface. Lots has happened since then! My Windows 10 laptop had some memory issues I didn't know about until a semi-major update I tried to install caused a blue screen of death. I thought- okay I'll just use the rescue external hard drive to recover.....oops, I saved pictures and files to it but the actual rescue portion still was for my older Windows 7 machine. Hmmm. , what to do. I did also realize I had a memory problem so I ordered a new memory card which I installed and it did correct the memory errors but the OS was still not happy.

  This whole issue was happening during a very busy time of the year for me---summer in Minnesota. I decided to check pricing on a new laptop with the idea of somehow recovering this old one in the future. It had given me many years of service-first as a win 7 ,then win 10 PC so maybe it was time for an upgrade. Looking online I found many options and I actually found the best deal directly from Dell so I ordered a Windows 11 laptop for a very reasonable price. 

  After it was delivered I went thru the set up process and learning from my mistake made a recovery USB drive very soon after set up. I also made backups of some older Mac books on separate USB drives. Back up ,back up, back up was my new mantra!! Windows 11 I found to be a easier operating system than either 7 or 10. I was able to load ham log information and various files I had saved from  several USB  drives.

  I also worked on getting My digital interface working with Windows 11 and this did take some extra time trying different parameters in software for N1mm,LOG4OM and MMTTY. Luckily I did write down many parameters from My windows 10 set up and was able to use these with windows 11. I realized very soon the old PC had interfacing issues because now I was able to have N1MM and LOG4OM both work with My CAT interface using many of the same parameters. 

  Both CAT for logging and control seemed to be working although N1MM still showed an occasional CAT issue but I think some more parameter manipulation will clear this up. I next wanted to try RTTY using MMTTY which is the first step before interfacing MMTTY with N1MM as the digital "engine" decoding and transmitting RTTY. Add on programs like MMTTY,LOG4OM and N1MM sometimes need external programs to interface to the radio properly. LOG4OM I use Omnirig and MMTTY needs ExtFSK64 for keying the transmitter.

  All of the programs and radio parameters need to be set the same and thats where My problem was for RTTY FSK . I accidentily had RTS and DTR inverted between MMTTY and ExtFSK64 so upon transmit the radio PTT was toggling. Once I corrected this issue I finally was transmitting FSK RTTY but it wasn't until a operator out East informed me about the frequency drift and RTTY not printing at his end that I discovered the final problem. MMTTY was set to fixed and not FSK under the AFC menu. After I changed this menu option I had no problems making RTTY contacts during the contest.

  I will give the parameters for using thr FT-950,SCU-17 interface and associated programs in part 4---- the final saga!!!

73 for now---Tim