[drats_users] drats_users Digest, Vol 1, Issue 11

[Dan Smith]

Hi Eric,

Sorry for the delayed response.

> I know you've had problems receiving files from those of us stuck on using
> Windows. Not by choice but by necessity. Sorry.

I'm not sure what you're referring to exactly, but I'm okay with raw
text files attached to an email.  I'd prefer that to rar'ing them up,
but I can open rar files if need be.

> So, hopefully this won't cause to much of a problem but, I've zipped four
> different log files together so you can see what is happening from each
> location.

Okay, it's a little hard to determine what execution path each log
represents, but I can comment on some of it.

The kc5goi station seems to have been able to successfully send a file
to you.  He got back all the expected ACKs of the blocks and the
transfer seemed to close normally.

I noticed two things:

1. At one point you have your callsign set to KD7CAO/91AD.  You can't do
this, because D-RATS uses your callsign in the packet address fields,
which can only store 8 characters (like a normal D-STAR field).  When
you use something longer, it truncates it in some places and not others,
which breaks connectivity pretty badly as you might image.

The root of this is my fault.  I've known about this for some time, but
forgot to fix it.  So, if this is something you often do, change it to
just your callsign and see if that helps.

2. When I look at your log, I see that you're getting random XOFF/XON
character pairs from the serial port, and usually after you have sent
something.  This tells me that something in the low-level serial layer
might be reordering those control characters to be "helpful".  In order
to manage the large USB-to-UART buffer in a USB-to-serial adapter,
D-RATS does its own flow control.  If your serial adapter (well, the
driver actually) is trying to "help", then things will break.

I don't have a vista machine or an USB adapter with your chipset to test
with, so it's hard for me to prove this.  What was KC5GOI using?  You
said you have an XP machine, do you see this problem on that box with
the same USB adapter?

Thanks!

-- 
Dan Smith
dsmith#danplanet.com, s/#/@/
www.danplanet.com
KK7DS