There certainly is a lot of comment about USB Converters. I have a lot of
recent experience with trying to make them work on my new HP Pavilion Desk Top
with Windows 7. I have had some disappointments but things seem to change
every day.
I have received several messages that the problem is when you try to use a
Prolific chip based adapter with a program built in Visual Basic. Several, if
not all of the ham logging programs are written in Visual Basic. The symptoms
seem to be different in different applications. The Prolific converter that I
bought from Elecraft works fine with Windows 7 and the Elecraft firmware
maintenance program after I uploaded the latest driver from Prolific. It will
receive data from XMlog but it will not send data from the K3 to the logging
program. It worked just fine with my previous XP Professional, Pentium IV
computer. My FTDI based WinKeyer USB with the latest FTDI driver would crash
Windows about every hour or two as long as the Driver was enabled,
whether XMLog was connected or not, whether the WinKeyer was connected or not.
I installed and activated a two port RS-232 board purchased from Tiger Direct
and manufactured by Startech.com. This uses a DB-9 connection to the K3 and
seems to work fine for the Elecraft Software, XMlog and N1MM. It does not seem
to cause any trouble to any of my other applications or Windows 7. Some day I
will try Ham Radio Deluxe now that I have a computer big enough to handle it.
The problem with the FTDI driver seems to have mostly gone away. I have a
few reboots at night, but I attribute that to Microsoft trying to fix things
and rebooting. MS does fix things, but they don't announce it reliably,
leaving you to guess what has happened. It makes sense that they will do what
they can to avoid the Blue Screen of Death that they have falsely promised
would not accompany Windows 7. They also will try to make Visual Basic work
reliable with everything to protect their income stream. I am sure they don't
want Windows 7 to become the parieh that Vista has become. They want us to
give up on the idea that XP is the system to use for reliability. So I have
confidence that they will keep their 10,000 programmers busy trying to sort out
the problems. Abandoning all the Prolific chip based converters is an option,
but not a good one for us or for Microsoft.
Unfortunately, it is a situation that is not controlled by ham radio operators
or the vendors who serve us. All we can do it to try to work through it and
find work arounds or stay with XP. I have confidence that we will be able to
make Windows 7 work in time. We have to because the source of support for XP
is going away. It is inevitable that some will have no difficulty at all and
others with different software and application needs will have a great deal of
trouble. Willis 'Cookie' Cooke
K5EWJ
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