[hpsdr] No Signals from a New HPSDR

[Joe Martin K5SO]

Hi Jim,

The first step in setting up a new HPSDR system is always to put the  
latest firmware into all the boards.

The central spike you see in your display (and the noisy audio) is due  
to incompatible firmware on the various boards, in particular, the  
frequency information that is being sent from the PC to Mercury is not  
arriving at Mercury in your case most likely.  The past two firmware  
revisions have used different broadcast specifications from Ozy to the  
Atlas bus so it is critical that you use versions of firmware that  
expect the same specs for the Ozy-to-Atlas bus broadcast else Mercury  
will never receive the proper instructions to run correctly.  The fact  
that you get any version numbers reported at all shows that there is a  
basic communications path between the PC, Ozy, and Mercury but the  
"spike" you see arises because Mercury is trying to operate at zero  
frequency, which of course it cannot.

I strongly recommend installing the latest set of firmware into your  
boards before continuing;  Mercury v3.1, Ozy v2.1, Penelope v1.6  
(Metis v1.6 if you happen to have a Metis) are the latest fully  
compatible versions.   You cannot use any of these firmware versions  
with any of the earlier versions as there is a totally new broadcast  
length being used in the latest versions so all boards need the latest  
firmware.

Also, I assume you mean Excalibur instead of Gibraltar but that's not  
important as Excalibur has no firmware to worry about anyway.

When you get around to re-trying your 64-bit Windows 7 machine you  
will need to use a signed driver.  That is available from the HPSDR  
download site as well.  But for now if I were you I'd get the HPSDR  
rig running on your XP machine since it apparently already is  
basically communicating okay across the HPSDR-PC USB path fine  
(otherwise you would not be seeing any version numbers being  
reported).   By the way, are the version numbers you reported the  
actual numbers you set in the Setup > HPSDR > firmware version  
window...or what you intended to put into them?    The number you  
report for Penelope makes no sense.

73,  Joe K5SO



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