Thetis 2.9.0.6 lockup on return to receive from transmit

[dieseldawg]

Hi All, I have a 7000 MkII running on Win10. Intel 7 with 32 G, separate Ethernet card for the 7000 (Cat 6 card and cable). Lockup occurs at random when returning to receive from transmit. I've tried all kinds of Windows changes, update uninstalls, prefetch and temp clear, fresh install of Thetis , with no relief. The lockup is as if the Ethernet connection was interrupted, and doesn't come back on its own. Sometimes closing and restarting Thetis fixes it, sometimes I have to restart the 7000. Is there a reason that Thetis doesn't try to recover from a loss of Ethernet without restart?

Greg

[w9mdb]

What other software are you using?

[dieseldawg]

No other software besides what gets installed with windows. I even deleted some of the Windows default software, if I don't need it for the OS.

[w9mdb]

So you're doing CW and/or Voice?

[w9mdb]

And what kind of antenna do you have?
And what does your shack grounding system look like?

[dieseldawg]

Voice only. I have several antennas: 1/2 wave dipoles for 40,80, and 160, resonant with baluns for transmitting. non resonant dipole with ladder line and balanced tune. Power level and antennal doesn't affect whether the problem occurs.

[w-u-2-o]

Has it ever worked properly? If so, what changed?

[w9mdb]

Have you turned off power saving on the ethernet card and also any "green" settings in the advanced settings?

[dieseldawg]

Thetis had worked without the problem several months ago. I thought that perhaps Windows update might have caused the problem so I rolled back updates for 3 months, but that didn't help. Nothing else has changed since it worked OK. All of the energy saving settings in the Ethernet card have been disabled.

[w-u-2-o]

This seems like it could be an EMI/RFI problem. Is your PC bonded to the station ground? Are you using wired or wireless keyboard and mouse (wireless is more resistant).

[K1LSB]

Does the problem persist even when you transmit at low power into a dummy load?

I'm asking in the vein of eliminating RF as a source of the problem.

Mark

[dieseldawg]

Scott, I'm not so sure it is an RFI problem because it occurs when i'm only transmitting with low power, 20 Watts. My computer is grounded with heavy ground strap. Also, I think it might not be only a Thetis problem, because sometimes I have to power off and power the radio back on to clear the Thetis lockup, even after I have shut it down and reopened the program and restarted it.

I'm still thinking it is due to some kind of delay in communication between the radio and the computer. Thetis will lock up in the same way if I disconnect the Ethernet cable between the radio and computer. After doing that, Thetis must be restarted even after the cable is plugged back in. Do you know why Thetis is not designed to try to re-establish communication between the radio and computer after an interruption has occurred? Changing the Network Watchdog setting doesn't affect the freeze up.

Greg

[w9mdb]

Heavy ground strap to what? Please describe your complete ground system.
A non-resonant antenna will have a lot of common mode going on the shield.

[dieseldawg]

Ground strap to central station ground. But the problem occurs even when transmitting into a dummy load at low power. Also, all non-resonant antennas are fed with ladder line into a balanced turner with a choke on the input.

[w9mdb]

Is your central station ground hook to the house main ground rod?

[dieseldawg]

No, station ground is independent of house electrical ground.

[w9mdb]

That is a violation of the electrical code. I imagine your computer is plugged into a wall socket and grounded through that, right?
So you now have a ground path from your rod outside through your shack and back out the other ground since your computer is also grounded to the rig through the ethernet cable and power supply.
All outside ground rods are required to be bonded to the house ground. If your tower is far enough away it can have it's own ground.
This can also create RFI in the shack since you have two grounds at different potentials....even on a dummy load.

[dieseldawg]

The outside station ground rods are connected outside to the house electrical ground rods with a copper connect wire. But there is no direct connection inside between station ground and house ground, except through electrical sockets. Is more than that required by the code? Does this offer a possible solution to the freeze problem I have with Thetis?

[Ernie]

Can you describe your 2 networks? IP's and Network masks, etc?

[dieseldawg]

The radio is connected to the PC with a second Ethernet card, directly with nothing else connected. The problem occurs if I disconnect the LAN form the PC. The lan is a 192.169.1.xx LAN, connected to the WAN router.

Greg

[w-u-2-o]

The radio is connected to the PC with a second Ethernet card, directly with nothing else connected. The problem occurs if I disconnect the LAN form the PC. The lan is a 192.169.1.xx LAN, connected to the WAN router.

Please clarify: the "lockup" problem does not occur if the main LAN connection to the router is attached?

Question: what IP subnet are you using on the second Ethernet that goes to the radio? And did you adjust the Network Metric settings to give that connection priority (lower metric = higher priority).

Info: when there is a problem that requires the ANAN hardware to be power cycled that means the FPGA firmware has crashed.

[w9mdb]

192.169.1.X is not a private network address. Did you mistype that?

What you want to do is this

Change your 2nd ethernet card to:

IP address 10.0.0.1

And put the rig on 10.0.0.2
You can use netmask 255.0.0.0

Mike W9MDB

[dieseldawg]

By crash I mean the Thetis program freezes, no receive and no response to pushing buttons, except Power and the PLL. Strangely, the transmit usually works. Almost always the radio must be cycled off then on to make it work again. Always requires shut down and restart of Thetis.

[w9mdb]

Maybe you should reflash the firmware

There is a phenomena of high energy particles in the atmosphere corrupting memory chips and I believe also flash memory which may explain why some firmware gets corrupted.

Google suffers from this in the their server farm for example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ra ... lectronics

[Ernie]

By crash I mean the Thetis program freezes, no receive and no response to pushing buttons, except Power and the PLL. Strangely, the transmit usually works. Almost always the radio must be cycled off then on to make it work again. Always requires shut down and restart of Thetis.

You have a networking issue. You cannot add a separate network card without some advanced networking skills. And you do not need to add a separate NIC to work your radio, it is simply not necessary, in spite of what some have suggested. My radio works flawlessly through 3 switches on my main network. Get rid of the extra card and run it all through a simple switch and it should work fine I am able to chat with you to help you out if you wish, just email me and we can chat on the phone. Email is good on QRZ.com.

Ernie
W2FMU

[w-u-2-o]

Having 2 NICs is barely basic networking.

However, still waiting for the OP to describe his networking setup in more detail.

[Ron Stockton]

FWIW - I had a very similar Thetis lock-up problem. In my case it was caused by RFI getting into the DLE 7000 with an integrated i7 from a TX antenna 60 ft above the shack. There is no problem using any of my other antennas farther away.

[dieseldawg]

OK, the lockup occurs whether I use a separate Ethernet card. or a single card on the LAN. It always occurs on release of PTT. I have several toroids on the Ethernet cable to the radio. The Lan is on 192.168.1.xxx and the radio is DHCP. On the separate card, I set the IP to 169.254.236.227 because the radio comes up as 169.254.236.228. I've also used two different computers, both I7, with Windows10, with the same results.

[w-u-2-o]

Are you using a wired mouse and/or keyboard? Try some ferrites on those cables or, even better, switch to a wireless mouse and keyboard.

[dieseldawg]

OK, putting ferrites on mouse and keyboard. Is there any clue from the fact that the lockup only occurs upon release of the PTT?