Hi Howard, I guess this Flex 1500 problem has presented a challenge, because despite my low spirits from yesterday, ready to drop kick the radio toward your shack... I spent a several more hours working on it today.
Started by uninstalling all the current Flex stuff. I considered my computer already pretty clean, since I always remove what is not being used. Certainly a more optimized PC than most folks ever bother to try for. But now I ran a program called nCleaner (read the reviews and got it free from cnet.com) which removed hundreds of files I didn't know were there, and also hundreds of disconnected or erroneous lines from the registry. Kind of scary the way it ripped thru everything deleting more than a 1000 items in a few seconds. I can't see any immediate damage from that cleaning, but I am sure something will turn up broken later. Then I examined every USB driver in the Device Manager... there was a long list of those and it wasn't easy identifying many of them, but by disconnecting the USB cables one at a time I figured them out. And then got rid of any unnecessary entries there by uninstalling the drivers, as well as just simply leaving some of them unplugged. Then I went looking for more drivers nCleaner may have missed... and found an old uninstall that apparently had failed part way thru, for the ASIO4ALL streaming audio drivers (and the parameter control program too) that were necessary for the Flex 1500 with XP before Rev 2 Beta was released. I had to manually delete what was left of all that mess, many of them hidden and/or system files. Not something I like to tinker with, but I didn't make any mistakes and got out alive. The ASIO4ALL drivers were a nightmare for those previous Flex Revs, and had been installed and uninstalled many times trying to get them to work. Then reinstalled Flex 2.0.19, and it did its USB optimization again. Hit Start and try CW mode, adjust the Drive, and the "no power output" problem is fixed! Then I fiddled with the USB Driver Buffer more toward Conservative, away from Aggressive. Set the Audio Buffer to 512, the Break-In delay to 50, SR to off... and it is all working the way it should now. So my only complaint is the relay is actually too loud... chatter-chatter which is irritating, but I can probably live with it. By comparison the relay of my IC-7600 is almost silent. This has been quite an ordeal getting the 1500 running on CW. I think the Flex is definitely not for every ham, and I am still wondering if it is for me either. I have put in at least 40 hours on this project since the radio was new last July... that is a a whole week I could have been working DX with my Icom 7600. Eight hours of frustration just recently for Rev 2.0.19. So I can't say I am happy with all that, and now I am reluctant to ever upgrade it, but of course I will have to... and spend more hours reading boring forums to see what happened. But the performance is outstanding now that it is working properly. The Semi break-in keying is finally acceptable after 8 months of waiting for software revisions, and a whole week of my own time trying to fix things. Of course it only operates SEMI, not FULL break-in keying... that is with receive audio between every dit and dah sent (T/R switching on every Morse code element). It was not meant to do full break-in like the IC-7600, which does that to perfection. However the 7600 did cost $3000 more than the 1500. Full break-in is really important in a DX pileup, but with QRP nobody is going to bust a pileup anyway. I have been holding the Flex CW performance to the same standards as an expensive Icom. In some ways that comparison is just aching to be made, like for the Rx specs, and in other ways it is not fair at all, like for the prices. Wait! That makes the Flex look PRETTY GOOD! Other than the hassle getting it running, the only actual drawback of 1500 is its noisy T/R relay and the fact that it only does Semi break-in keying... it can never do Full break-in (which Icom has perfected in their expensive radios). Signed... A Dedicated QRP DX CW Operator who wishes to remain sort of anonymous _______________________________________________ Flexedge mailing list [email protected] http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexedge_flex-radio.biz This is the FlexRadio Systems e-mail Reflector called FlexEdge. It is used for posting topics related to SDR software development and experimentalist who are using beta versions of the software.
