Re: [Dx4win] DX4WIN in DEMO mode
When Paul told you it was impossible he was probably referring to the logic of the program with which he is very familiar. However there are bugs in code that can make it do something totally unexpected. Examples are buffer overruns, dangling pointers etc. Depending on the development language used some can be ferociously hard to track down. I do agree with you that Paul should do something to mitigate this bug... and I think the best way is to write a transaction journal file... writing the whole log requires too much IO bandwidth... but just writing an ADIF journal file, especially if it could be written to removable media, would mean that any kind of failure, hardware or software, including the occasional and inevitable bug, would not result in the loss of data and would be very easy to recover from as you could just import the missing transactions. I really really think you should do this Paul. Please Mel, VE2DC Jack Shirley wrote: Yes This same thing happened to me. Almost exactly as you describe. ( I will leave out the *four letter explicitives*.) I described this to PAUL at Dayton and he told me this was impossible. For me it happened while N8S was on and I lost a lot of contacts. I had to go back and dupe most of them.As you have found out, after you try to close the program and it tells you it can't be saved, you really fd. You can even say no and get back into the program to hand write the last contacts. I started backing up all my important QSOs on paper log. I suggested they get rid of the Demo mode and make a version maybe excludes certain features. But not being able to save...?? There is a lot of free logging programs and have better support and features than this one, so why the demo mode. The most value in this program is in the updates which are done by AD1C and that's why I stay with the software. If the updates to the databases were done with the enthusiasm of Paul, this would be go to the same place as DX Desktop. So you might have someone in your computer that you don't know about. I suggest you run a offsite program by microtrend and run house call and see if it finds anything major. Start it at night when you are ready to go to bed as it take a long time for it to scan everything. The other bugs I think the program currently has and Paul won't address: Random going into: ignore Mode in real time Spots/sort by frequency/stupid program toggles between the lowest freq and current freq. Very annoying. Older versions of DX4WIN didn't behave this poorly. And the good old switching to Demo mode without a reason. 73 and good luck. N8DX On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 2:23 PM, Alan Zack k7...@cox.net wrote: Yesterday I had a very strange thing occur with DX4WIN. I have been a registered user for many years. Currently using ver 7.07.02. I have NEVER seen this happen before. I opened DX4WIN using the same shortcut as always. It appeared to open normally. I saw ZL7T spotted on 17m CW on the DXCluster (I did not have PACKET open on DX4WIN, instead I was using the separate VE3SUN DX Monitor program for my spotting). I did an F8 search for ZL7 to see if I needed them on 17m CW. I did, so I worked them, and all seemed OK. I had received some QSL cards in the mail so I did F8 searches for those calls and marked them as confirmed. Over the next few hours I worked C6/W6DXC on 20m SSB, C56YK on RTTY, and H40FN on 17m CW. Again, before working H40FN I did a F8 search to see if I needed H40 on 17m CW. All my F8 searches went normally and when I logged each new contact I searched for their QSL info and put the info and address in the QSL MGR window. Everything seemed to be working FB. My complete log was open and seemed to be working normally. But then, when I was ready to shut down I did an ALT+S to save the changes. OK. I then clicked on the uppermost right corner X to close the program. When I did that a window opened saying C:\PROGRAM FILES\DX4WIN707\SAVE\K7ACZ.DXL WAS MODIFIED, SAVE LOG TO DISK? I clicked on YES. Another window opened saying something to the effect that changes could not be saved in DEMO mode. I looked at the top of the main menu. It read something to the effect DX4WIN DEMO MODE. It should have read DX4WIN 7.07.2 K7ACZ, etc. At this point I knew I was in trouble. I needed to close the window that said: C:\PROGRAM FILES\DX4WIN707\SAVE\K7ACZ.DXL WAS MODIFIED, SAVE LOG TO DISK? so I could write down on a pad the calls, times, modes, etc, of the contacts I had made during the day so I could reenter them when I could open the program back to normal logging again. So I hit the CANCEL option thinking that would cancel the closing of the program. But it closed anyway causing me to lose all the contact s I had made during the day including a new mode (RTTY) for C56YK and a new band/mode (18m CW) for ZL7T and H40FN. I can't remember when during the 6 or so hours DX4WIN was open I
Re: [Dx4win] DX4WIN in DEMO mode
Jack, Looking around in my code, the only 'unexpected' way to get the program to ignore the mode from the radio is to double-click in the PSK32 or MMTTY Window. The assumption is that you double-click a callsign, and that you want to add a QSO with that callsign. As many radios do not indicate the mode PSK31 or RTTY, the program sets the mode to the mode of the window the double-click came from (PSK31 or RTTY). To have the mode stick, we need to set IgnoreMode, otherwise the next radio poll will set the mode back to the mode obtained from the radio. Again, looking at the code, the license status is checked when the program starts. Licensing can fail with a bad license file or mismatch in the 'checksum' of the executable. In the code, I do not see a possibility of changing the license back to demo mode. When the program runs, you can delete the license file, and the program does not switch into demo mode. When the radio interface gets a bad frequency from the radio, you will see the jumping in the spots window. To me that means there is something 'funny' in the interface you are using. I have heard about interfaces that drop or change a byte so now and than. I don't know what I can do about that, but will give it another look. We all appreciate very much what Jim, AD1C, does for us; no doubt about that! --73, Paul, KK4HD Jack Shirley wrote: Yes This same thing happened to me. Almost exactly as you describe. ( I will leave out the *four letter explicitives*.) I described this to PAUL at Dayton and he told me this was impossible. For me it happened while N8S was on and I lost a lot of contacts. I had to go back and dupe most of them.As you have found out, after you try to close the program and it tells you it can't be saved, you really fd. You can even say no and get back into the program to hand write the last contacts. I started backing up all my important QSOs on paper log. I suggested they get rid of the Demo mode and make a version maybe excludes certain features. But not being able to save...?? There is a lot of free logging programs and have better support and features than this one, so why the demo mode. The most value in this program is in the updates which are done by AD1C and that's why I stay with the software. If the updates to the databases were done with the enthusiasm of Paul, this would be go to the same place as DX Desktop. So you might have someone in your computer that you don't know about. I suggest you run a offsite program by microtrend and run house call and see if it finds anything major. Start it at night when you are ready to go to bed as it take a long time for it to scan everything. The other bugs I think the program currently has and Paul won't address: Random going into: ignore Mode in real time Spots/sort by frequency/stupid program toggles between the lowest freq and current freq. Very annoying. Older versions of DX4WIN didn't behave this poorly. And the good old switching to Demo mode without a reason. 73 and good luck. N8DX On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 2:23 PM, Alan Zack k7...@cox.net wrote: Yesterday I had a very strange thing occur with DX4WIN. I have been a registered user for many years. Currently using ver 7.07.02. I have NEVER seen this happen before. I opened DX4WIN using the same shortcut as always. It appeared to open normally. I saw ZL7T spotted on 17m CW on the DXCluster (I did not have PACKET open on DX4WIN, instead I was using the separate VE3SUN DX Monitor program for my spotting). I did an F8 search for ZL7 to see if I needed them on 17m CW. I did, so I worked them, and all seemed OK. I had received some QSL cards in the mail so I did F8 searches for those calls and marked them as confirmed. Over the next few hours I worked C6/W6DXC on 20m SSB, C56YK on RTTY, and H40FN on 17m CW. Again, before working H40FN I did a F8 search to see if I needed H40 on 17m CW. All my F8 searches went normally and when I logged each new contact I searched for their QSL info and put the info and address in the QSL MGR window. Everything seemed to be working FB. My complete log was open and seemed to be working normally. But then, when I was ready to shut down I did an ALT+S to save the changes. OK. I then clicked on the uppermost right corner X to close the program. When I did that a window opened saying C:\PROGRAM FILES\DX4WIN707\SAVE\K7ACZ.DXL WAS MODIFIED, SAVE LOG TO DISK? I clicked on YES. Another window opened saying something to the effect that changes could not be saved in DEMO mode. I looked at the top of the main menu. It read something to the effect DX4WIN DEMO MODE. It should have read DX4WIN 7.07.2 K7ACZ, etc. At this point I knew I was in trouble. I needed to close the window that said: C:\PROGRAM FILES\DX4WIN707\SAVE\K7ACZ.DXL WAS MODIFIED, SAVE LOG TO DISK? so I could write down on a pad the calls, times, modes, etc, of the contacts I had made during the day so I could
Re: [Dx4win] DX4WIN in DEMO mode
At 04:10 PM 3/7/2009, Paul van der Eijk wrote: Again, looking at the code, the license status is checked when the program starts. Licensing can fail with a bad license file or mismatch in the 'checksum' of the executable. In the code, I do not see a possibility of changing the license back to demo mode. When the program runs, you can delete the license file, and the program does not switch into demo mode. I have my D4W shortcut in my Windows system tray (to the left, next to the Start button). From there it only takes a single click to run the program. However, sometimes I double-click on the icon out of habit and D4W will almost always start-up in Demo mode. There is obviously something going on with the almost simultaneous start-up. When that happens I simply Exit the Demo copy, restart D4W with a single click and all is good. Dick -- Dick Flanagan K7VC d...@k7vc.com __ Dx4win mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/dx4win Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Dx4win@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
