Re-open Com Port Issue

[ND1Y]

Hi,

I just got a K3/0 Mini and RRC-1258s a week ago and have been playing with them since then. I is fun. I succeeded in a basic operation in LAN environment and am now trying to configure N1MM at control site. Thanks to W1UE,Dennis's thread, radio CAT and CW keying have been successful.

While N1MM is configured to Control RRC with USB virtual comport 1 (COM 2 at PC side), after Control RRC is restarted for some reason, N1MM can not reopen COM2 to talk to Control RRC. The only way I figured out to cure this problem is to restart PC, which is tedious and time consuming. My PC used Windows 7 Professional as a OS.

Are there any ways to allow N1MM to reopen COM2 to talk to Control RRC without restarting PC? Your help would be much appreciated.

Sam ND1Y/JL1CNY
 

[dj0qn]

Sam,

If you restart the RRC, then you effectively "kill" the USB virtual serial port. This confuses and
even crashes some programs (it completely crashes TRX-Manager, for example). It would be
best to exist N1MM before doing so, if possible. I personally know of no clean solution to this
problem, which would affect any kind of virtual serial port, not just the RRC's. You could try pulling
the USB cable out before instead, but this would likely have the same result.

If you happen to have a "real" serial port on the PC, use a serial cable to COM1 instead of the USB
virtual serial port. This doesn't always crash programs as does the virtual ports.

73,
Mitch DJ0QN / K7DX

[ND1Y]

Thank you for your reply, Mitch. I closed N1MM first then restarted Control-RRC with no joy. I wonder if this could be handeled by the software.

I had thought to use a real serial port as you suggested but am still using a virtual com port. I need "Use DTR as CW" function for N1MM.

73.

Sam ND1Y/JL1CNY

[Jan (Microbit)]

If closing the program which uses the USB serial port and even disconnecting the USB cable prior to rebooting the RRC does not help then there is nothing any software can do to fix that. In that case it's Windows which does not release the resources like it should.

[dj0qn]

Right, I wanted to rephrase my answer.....the problem you describe is caused by Windows
and would be affected by any device providing a virtual serial driver, e.g. Microham products,
RRC's, etc.

The (possible) solution using a "real" serial cable may work, because Windows can't tell if it
is unplugged or not, the serial port in Windows still functions. However, some software may still
crash if it can't handle loss of a serial handshake properly.

73,
Mitch DJ0QN / K7DX

[ND1Y]

Jan an Mitch, thank you for the clarification. Appreciated.

Sam ND1Y/JL1CNY