Re: [Elecraft] Fwd: Re: LP Bridge crashes with K3

[Lynn W. Taylor, WB6UUT]

On 12/6/2016 3:36 PM, George Kidder wrote:
Lynn:  Since the computer is not connected to the network, there 
should be little potential for evil except that which I generate 
myself!  The major evil is the power that it draws! 
The major evil would be power spikes.  I've not lost a computer that was 
off, but I've lost computers to power spikes that were turned on.

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Re: [Elecraft] Fwd: Re: LP Bridge crashes with K3

[George Kidder]

Lynn:  Since the computer is not connected to the network, there should 
be little potential for evil except that which I generate myself!  The 
major evil is the power that it draws!


Tom and Guy:  It certainly begins to sound as if the drivers are at 
fault.  I formerly ran the program on my old XP machine with no 
problems, although I don't really remember if I gave it the "24 hour 
stress test".  But that machine is too slow to use all the programs I 
want to use.  But, Tom, I don't think it is memory leak, since running 
Task Manager and looking at the memory usage, I get a steady value 
around 1.1 GB for everything that is running, and this value does not 
change over 24 hours.  Curiously, however, NaP3's CPU usage shows big 
spikes about every 20 seconds, going from ~20% to about 60% and back 
again.  Both processors do this in parallel.  This is not a LPB problem, 
however, since LPB shows a steady, low usage if NaP3 is not running.


So, with a big thanks to everyone who replied, I will take the easy way 
out and shut down the computer at night.  Maybe some day I will 
understand enough to use a different cure.


73 - George, W3HBM


On 12/6/2016 2:07 PM, Lynn W. Taylor, WB6UUT wrote:
Computers that are turned off are safe from all kinds of potential 
evil.  That would be my recommendation.


On 12/6/2016 10:37 AM, George Kidder wrote:
So again I am at the end of my short rope!  Maybe I should shut down 
the system EVERY night.  That seems to cure it.


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Re: [Elecraft] Fwd: Re: LP Bridge crashes with K3

[Guy Olinger K2AV]

Hi George,

I have to agree with Tom on this one, either suspect drivers, or some as
yet undiscovered conflict running on your PC. The slowdown you describe is
a dead giveaway. That the dying program sends some garbage to the K3 as it
expires is irrelevant.

Whatever the program/driver is the problem, it's now so lost in itself that
it has called for a writeout to an external device when there is no data to
send. It has clearly lost its mind.

A common bug in a poorly written program is called a "memory leak". That is
where a program allocates a certain amount of memory for a transient task,
and when the task is done, does not release all the memory back to the
"memory pool". This causes available memory to creep down until there is
not enough to run. The offending program often crashes, because the same
stinky programming causing the memory leak also does not provide a smooth
shut down at out of memory with meaningful messages to inform which program
is exiting and why.

There are variants of this malady, like the one where the program assigns a
FIXED large buffer to a usage, and then exhausts it in the same manner.
This is a lazy solution to a memory leak that they can't find, hoping to
crash just the program and not the operating system. Sometimes these
buffers are without boundary code which detects end of assigned space and
gracefully exits with understandable messages. The stinky code then
proceeds to gradually *overwrite its own program instructions* until it
encounters code it is actually running and then it simply goes insane. This
is possibly a blue screen or PC hang moment, though later OS are getting
better and better at trapping code like this.

Outward symptoms to the PC user could be anything. There are other specific
kinds of stinky programming that present in the same "What the h*ll is
that?" fashion. But there is a way to spy on this stuff as it runs.

You run a CPU monitor that displays what is going on in the PC. One of the
displays will be active memory, Possibly called memory set, listed by
program. Sort on this column and then watch stuff on your system. Often the
offending program sticks out like a sore thumb. There may be multiple
issues that point to conflicts among things you run at the same time.

A better good and free monitor, can be found at
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb795533.aspx.

On the upper right of this page, under Top Ten Downloads, download Process
Explorer and install. This well done monitor does not suffer from a lot of
the clunkies that the Microsoft monitors and some of the other 3rd party
monitors seem to have.

The only complaint I have ever had about it is the default color line of
black text on dark grey or purple for suspended processes and packed
images. Those can be easily fixed in menu bar>options>configure colors,
which also has the color code for what kind of thing each color is. Click
on the column headers Working Set, CPU, and CPU Time. Here you can remove
or add types from the display by checking or unchecking the line.

I would expect Windows 7 should run Process Explorer just fine, though
currently I only have an ancient laptop with XP and all else is upgraded to
Windows 10 Pro, which at this point seems the best OS Microsoft has ever
written. If you really like it, in Windows 10 you can do Process
Explorer>menu bar>Options>Replace Task Monitor. I think MS bought it and at
some point will simply replace their "Resource Monitor" with this one.

It's not yet time to disassemble your K3 and send the pile of pieces back
to Watsonville.

Let us know what you find spying on stuff.

73 and for sure Good Luck

Guy K2AV

On Tue, Dec 6, 2016 at 3:21 PM, Tom <tom...@videotron.ca> wrote:

> Honestly, I don't believe this is an issue with LPBridge but rather Eltima
> drivers.  I can run the Eltima serial port monitor and even without traffic
> it will always crash after a number of hours.
> Always.
> There is not much that can be done other than rebooting after some time or
> closing it all when you are not using it.
> 73 Tom
>
> -Original Message- From: George Kidder
> Sent: Tuesday, December 6, 2016 1:37 PM
> To: 'Elecraft Reflector'
> Subject: [Elecraft] Fwd: Re: LP Bridge crashes with K3
>
>
> Larry and all,
>
> I have now tried adjusting the buffer settings.  Originally, they were
> set full "right" (High, 14 for receive, High 16 for transmit)  I moved
> the sliders to about 3/4 of full scale - still got a LPB crash in about
> 7 hours, while running NaP3 and FLDigi through LPB.  I next tried the
> "correct connection problems" setting, full left (1) on each.  This time
> it ran more than 3 but less than 20 hours (overnight run) and while LPB
> did not crash, NaP3 did, which requires complete computer reboot. So it
> is not clear that the buffer settings are doing anything

Re: [Elecraft] Fwd: Re: LP Bridge crashes with K3

[Tom]

Honestly, I don't believe this is an issue with LPBridge but rather Eltima 
drivers.  I can run the Eltima serial port monitor and even without traffic 
it will always crash after a number of hours.

Always.
There is not much that can be done other than rebooting after some time or 
closing it all when you are not using it.

73 Tom

-Original Message- 
From: George Kidder

Sent: Tuesday, December 6, 2016 1:37 PM
To: 'Elecraft Reflector'
Subject: [Elecraft] Fwd: Re: LP Bridge crashes with K3

Larry and all,

I have now tried adjusting the buffer settings.  Originally, they were
set full "right" (High, 14 for receive, High 16 for transmit)  I moved
the sliders to about 3/4 of full scale - still got a LPB crash in about
7 hours, while running NaP3 and FLDigi through LPB.  I next tried the
"correct connection problems" setting, full left (1) on each.  This time
it ran more than 3 but less than 20 hours (overnight run) and while LPB
did not crash, NaP3 did, which requires complete computer reboot. So it
is not clear that the buffer settings are doing anything except to slow
down the reaction of FLDigi to frequency changes - takes about 5 seconds
now.

So again I am at the end of my short rope!  Maybe I should shut down the
system EVERY night.  That seems to cure it.

George


 Forwarded Message 
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] LP Bridge crashes with K3
Date: Sun, 04 Dec 2016 18:43:53 -0500
From: George Kidder <gkid...@ilstu.edu>
Reply-To: gkid...@ilstu.edu
To: elecraft@mailman.qth.net



No I have not, Larry.  What settings do you recommend for starters?

George


On 12/4/2016 11:02 AM, Larry Phipps wrote:

Have you tried adjusting the buffer settings in Device Mgr for your
serial port?

Larry N8LP

Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2016 09:33:33 -0500
From: George Kidder<gkid...@ilstu.edu>
To: 'Elecraft Reflector'<elecraft@mailman.qth.net>
Subject: [Elecraft] LP Bridge crashes with K3
Message-ID:<a6a9a38b-ed36-ec28-ae6f-e60d63ad2...@ilstu.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed

OK, gang!  I've tried everything I can think of, and am now looking for
some additional thoughts.

Equipment: K3 (unmodified) with firmware 5.53, computer (2.99 GHz dual
core, 4 GB memory) running Win 7, LP-Bridge (LPB) set for 200 mS delay.
The computer is not connected to the internet, and all programs are
brought in from another computer using a flash drive.

Problem:  At random but long intervals (hours) LP-Bridge crashes,
displaying error 13 (type mismatch).  Clearing this window causes
program to close.  This behavior is seen with no external programs
connected to LPB, and with LPB set to any polling rate from 200 mS
(default) to as much as 1000 mS.  It is seen when LPB2 is used and the
baud rate is reduced to 4800.  When the crash occurs, the error seems to
be in a response from the K3 - for instance, the "Rig Received Text"
window shows "IS 0|00;" while it should show "IS 0600;".  In this case
the K3 was set to CW mode.  In LSB mode, the same window shows "CW 6+;"
where I presume it should have been "CW 60;".  This damaged text shows
up in all windows (Rig received, K3 Com port, Power SCR-IF Aux CAT port,
etc.)

Attempted resolution includes reloading the K3 firmware and reloading
LPB from the website after clearing out all remnants of the old
program.  Nothing helps - LPB still crashes when allowed to run for
several hours.  Other programs not affected.  Computer is on a UPS, so
momentary power outage would not be a cause (even if there should be one
every night!)

Clearly, there is a communication failure between the K3 and LPB, since
it occurs with nothing else connected.  Is the problem with the K3, LBP
or the Win 7 operating system which sits between them?  And what more
can I try to fix it?

Your thoughts will be greatly appreciated.

George, W3HBM


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Re: [Elecraft] Fwd: Re: LP Bridge crashes with K3

[Lynn W. Taylor, WB6UUT]

Computers that are turned off are safe from all kinds of potential 
evil.  That would be my recommendation.


On 12/6/2016 10:37 AM, George Kidder wrote:
So again I am at the end of my short rope!  Maybe I should shut down 
the system EVERY night.  That seems to cure it.


__
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[Elecraft] Fwd: Re: LP Bridge crashes with K3

[George Kidder]

Larry and all,

I have now tried adjusting the buffer settings.  Originally, they were 
set full "right" (High, 14 for receive, High 16 for transmit)  I moved 
the sliders to about 3/4 of full scale - still got a LPB crash in about 
7 hours, while running NaP3 and FLDigi through LPB.  I next tried the 
"correct connection problems" setting, full left (1) on each.  This time 
it ran more than 3 but less than 20 hours (overnight run) and while LPB 
did not crash, NaP3 did, which requires complete computer reboot. So it 
is not clear that the buffer settings are doing anything except to slow 
down the reaction of FLDigi to frequency changes - takes about 5 seconds 
now.


So again I am at the end of my short rope!  Maybe I should shut down the 
system EVERY night.  That seems to cure it.


George


 Forwarded Message 
Subject:Re: [Elecraft] LP Bridge crashes with K3
Date:   Sun, 04 Dec 2016 18:43:53 -0500
From:   George Kidder 
Reply-To:   gkid...@ilstu.edu
To: elecraft@mailman.qth.net



No I have not, Larry.  What settings do you recommend for starters?

George


On 12/4/2016 11:02 AM, Larry Phipps wrote:

Have you tried adjusting the buffer settings in Device Mgr for your
serial port?

Larry N8LP

Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2016 09:33:33 -0500
From: George Kidder
To: 'Elecraft Reflector'
Subject: [Elecraft] LP Bridge crashes with K3
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed

OK, gang!  I've tried everything I can think of, and am now looking for
some additional thoughts.

Equipment: K3 (unmodified) with firmware 5.53, computer (2.99 GHz dual
core, 4 GB memory) running Win 7, LP-Bridge (LPB) set for 200 mS delay.
The computer is not connected to the internet, and all programs are
brought in from another computer using a flash drive.

Problem:  At random but long intervals (hours) LP-Bridge crashes,
displaying error 13 (type mismatch).  Clearing this window causes
program to close.  This behavior is seen with no external programs
connected to LPB, and with LPB set to any polling rate from 200 mS
(default) to as much as 1000 mS.  It is seen when LPB2 is used and the
baud rate is reduced to 4800.  When the crash occurs, the error seems to
be in a response from the K3 - for instance, the "Rig Received Text"
window shows "IS 0|00;" while it should show "IS 0600;".  In this case
the K3 was set to CW mode.  In LSB mode, the same window shows "CW 6+;"
where I presume it should have been "CW 60;".  This damaged text shows
up in all windows (Rig received, K3 Com port, Power SCR-IF Aux CAT port,
etc.)

Attempted resolution includes reloading the K3 firmware and reloading
LPB from the website after clearing out all remnants of the old
program.  Nothing helps - LPB still crashes when allowed to run for
several hours.  Other programs not affected.  Computer is on a UPS, so
momentary power outage would not be a cause (even if there should be one
every night!)

Clearly, there is a communication failure between the K3 and LPB, since
it occurs with nothing else connected.  Is the problem with the K3, LBP
or the Win 7 operating system which sits between them?  And what more
can I try to fix it?

Your thoughts will be greatly appreciated.

George, W3HBM


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