[Xastir] Re: D700 commands

[Tom Russo]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2004 at 08:56:38PM -0700, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <jewen at shaw.ca> flavor, containing:
> > > I also dumped all of the delays out of the startup and stop 
> > files. Now 
> > > it doesn't take 10 seconds to configure, only about 2.
> > 
> > If that works for you, great.  But the delays were placed 
> > there because at least on some of our D700s, the startup 
> > files were bumping up against delays in the D700 and failing. 
> >  Look at your incoming data window.  Are you seeing lots of 
> > "Eh?" responses?  It could be blazing through the file, and 
> > not actually getting all the setup right.
> 
> Hmm, it didn't seem to cause any problems. I got into PKT mode and was
> seeing local RF data and able to TX. I shut down without incident. Now of
> course I wasn't watching the incoming data window, because I never knew it
> existed... I never really explored that menu much.

Interesting.  Curt, David Flood, and I spent a bit over a week in June going 
over this issue.  Many folks had been seeing the annoying "D700 lockup in 
Opening TNC when shutting down Xastir and won't come back to life without hard 
reset" issue, and while we knew how to prevent it with various direct D700 
commands, we couldn't get them to work in Xastir config files.  The startup 
file, complete with delays and the code to recognize those meta lines, was the
most reliable thing we could get that guaranteed clean shutdowns and that each 
step of the startup and stop files was recognized by the D700 without "?Eh" 
and other error messages.

It's great if it works for you and is much faster, but that's why those things 
are there.  If you don't see problems then all's well, but if you ever
do you know where they might be coming from.

> You could remove the delays, and try it on a simplex channel where there's
> no activity to make sure the radio is able to keep up. I'm sure I read
> somewhere that the incoming commands can be stuffed to the radio as fast as
> you want, it all gets buffered until the radio can get to it.

There are some definite issues with certain commands to the D700 causing 
a delay in the response, and sending commands during those delays can
cause the commands to be ignored; we witnessed it happening all the time
until inserting the delays.  Pausing before sending data after commands
like "TNC 2" was necessary on both David Flood's and my D700, as commands like 
this cause the TNC to reset and be unresponsive for a second or so.  Could be 
they've fixed something in firmware in later units?  It is possible that some 
of the delays are overkill, but some of them were definitely necessary for 
those of us who were trying to get it all working back then.  

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY     SAR502  DM64ux         http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236 AHTB#1 http://www.qsl.net/~km5vy/
 "When life gives you lemons, find someone with a paper cut."