James E Watts
Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:51:39 -0800
Well, I took the plunge and received my Flex 5000a with second receiver Wednesday, 2-03-2010. This is my second try with the Flex 5000 as I purchased one about 2 years ago and I just wasn't happy with it and sent it back after 2 weeks. I had lots of drop outs and constantly had to stop and start the PowerSDR software. This time, I decided to dedicate a computer for the Flex with Windows 7 installed and all the necessary services removed, in other words a very basic, stripped down OS. I'm having much better luck this time. This seems very stable and I haven't had to restart the PowerSDR software any at all because of drop outs or non responsiveness. I believe this is the way to go with a Flex radio.
Now, on to a few observations: Receiver 1 can't be muted without muting both receivers, is this by design or have I missed a setting somewhere? RX2 can't remember where I was on other bands, I have to constantly reset Mode and filter settings each time I change bands on the 2nd receiver, again, have I missed a setting here? Besides these 2 or 3 minor annoyances, I'm very happy with my Flex this time around. Also, I thought I would pass on a performance enhancer for Vista and Windows 7 users. I was fortunate to be able to find a PCI slot to put my TI Firewire card in that didn't share IRQ's with anything else, but theres a tweak that will allow you to set your 1394 PCI card IRQ to have number one priority. It's called IRQpriority and the link will have a step by step guide. Caution, it does require editing your registry and adding a key, but this guide will step you through it with screen shots. http://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-vista-tips/manage-irq-settings-windows-vista-7/ I look forward to hearing from other flexers, James, W8GN _______________________________________________ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kc.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/