I had something similar occur on a not-new Dell E6420 (I5 curiously enough) laptop; what it turned out to be is the system clock was 'slipping' by various random amounts, second to second. The error would accumulate, no decodes, until it had slipped by 15 seconds, and then decodes would happen again. I'd owned this laptop for a while, but never noticed it because I never ran anything that needed that precise a time. I did notice that N1MM Logger would complain that it the station was off from the 'master' station quite frequently, but never cared enough to fix that.
The underlying issue seemed to be that the BIOS needed an update, and one of the power or USB modes (I set something in the Dell BIOS) was interfering with the clock. Key to finding this was installing the Meinberg NTP package, and using the ntpd monitoring screen to watch the time slippage in real time. Meinberg was unable to correct the clock in any way before the BIOS update and setting change. If that sounds anything like what you have going on, contact me off list and I'll elaborate. After the bios update, I can get the laptop to stay within the single-digit milliseconds with ntpd -Brian N9ADG On Wed, Jan 9, 2019 at 7:00 PM Mike Lewis <k7...@hotmail.com> wrote: > Hi Team, > > > > Like the subject line says, I found an odd problem. I bought a new HP > laptop with Core I5-8250 (newest 8th generation) quad core with 8GB and > SSD a couple weeks ago to replace an old 2008 Dell Centrino Core 2 Duo > which I have left hooked up for now. WSJT-X running on the new laptop will > not decode reliably, or even at all, for long periods of time unless I run > HDSDR at the same time. Tried multiple USB sound cards and the internal > audio, same results. Old laptop which has the same audio feed from the > radio decodes fine. Running HDSDR in parallel to WSJT-X on the new laptop > lets the new laptop decode perfectly. This has been quite the head > scratcher. With the steps I have taken below, I believe this could be a > bug, or perhaps some obscure feature interaction of the newest CPU/GPU > products (like the Intel Optane memory feature for example). > > > > Please read on for setup details and perf observations. Also I have a 2nd > station, same type radio (K3) with desktop core I-5 2nd gen, no GPU which > works fine. Below is a long read because it is complicated with many > variables which I hopefully have reduced. > > > > As a result of this behavior and investigation I have the following setup > working: > > I have the new laptop (Win 10 Pro) paired with an Elecraft K3 operated > remote. Audio goes from the K3 line out/in (internally transformer > isolated) jacks to the laptop via the headphone/mic input jack and via a > USB audio converter. The audio is also run to the old laptop mic in jack > via the USB monitor out jack (so should be buffered and has separate volume > control) as a backup and for performance comparisons. Splitting the audio > cable between sound cards, or not, makes no change to this behavior. > > > > I have found that I need run HDSDR in parallel with WSJT-X in order to > reliably decode some or any signals. I spent days chasing this down and > found it by accident while trying to look at the audio for interference > possibilities. I was also running N1MM+ which at first appeared to > directly relate to this, but I think I have since proved it is not the > cause but does seem to have some effect when not running HDSDR. > > > > I believe HDSDR (or possibly any similar graphic intense program perhaps) > is acting as a GPU and/or CPU load and when loaded enough, decoding works. > When working right, I crank out 30-40 decodes on a busy 40M band in a > second or 2. Turn off HDSDR and decoding usually stops completely, or > only decodes a few stations, though at program startup it will often go a > cycle or 3 OK. Occasionally it starts working with a few decodes, then get > full decodes for a short time during extended receive sessions then back to > no decodes. Changing to Fast or Normal do not seem to affect it. > > > > Watching Task Manager CPU and GPU numbers, I get iffy decoding perf at low > GPU numbers like <10%. GPU numbers 15-40% give the best results. The CPU > is usually 8-15%, anything higher is rare and short when just operating > WSJT-X. Running HDSDR on any audio source (stereo mix, mic in or USB line > in) does not seem to matter. Hit stop, decodes basically stop. Hit Start, > decodes resume full blast. When I minimize HDSDR (or hide the app window > behind other screens) the GPU is 2-5% and decoding is poor or none. When I > have HDSDR open as the top window, it is about 20-30% GPU and decoding is > perfect. When the HDSDR window is hidden behind other screens it is about > 3-5% decoding is poor but does seem to decode better then when minimized. > Changing WSJT-X.exe priority to higher like real-time makes no change > either (but does help the old slow laptop decode more stations). > > > > I thought maybe HDSDR was touching the audio buffer perhaps somehow > preventing buffer overrun or corruption of some sort, but I can choose > audio sources that WSJT-X is not connected to (in settings) and get the > same behavior, so audio buffer corruption or loss do not seem likely, but > maybe not ruled out. I have run 2 instances of WSJT-X on the new laptop, > one on the mic in, the other on the USB line in, and see the decodes when > working are nearly identical and near identical to the old laptop in > parallel. Stop HDSDR, both instances on the new laptop stop decoding. The > old laptop continues on fine. This is what leaves me to believe HDSDR is > not impacting the audio buffers, but more likely a CPU/GPU load related > behavior. Why I would have no clue. > > > > The audio levels are all set to be about the same, 30-40dB on the WSJT > scale. HDSDR sees that at S9+30 on 40M with lots of activity. I have > tried a range of audio levels and that does not change this behavior. > > > > I run all my machines via remote desktop client but I found the same > results running locally also. I can improve the old laptop by turning off > desktop background and other experience options to lighten the load, or > increase priority, but these type of changes have no effect on the new > laptop. > > > > Thanks for reading, > > > > Mike > > K7MDL > _______________________________________________ > wsjt-devel mailing list > wsjt-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wsjt-devel >
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