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
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