Optocom, Spectrum Commander IX, ScanCAT Gold - config tips needed

[N8YX]

I've had an OS535-equipped Pro-2035 for many years - got the board as a Christmas gift way back when and installed it in my scanner. The control package I used was ScanStar SE. Installed it on a Win-Workgroups 3.11 box, connected everything together and let 'er rip. Ran that setup for a long time until life changes came about and the PC was decommissioned.

Fast forward to present times: On the system I'm using to post this I have a WfW 3.11 VM that I managed to install the old ScanStar package into, including the latest updates. I also managed to get ahold of an Optocom, and once I sorted out the comm configuration the unit works good for analog scanning when controlled from the VM. Scan-stop and the S-meter function work as well.

On this same system I have an XP VM which I use to run a lot of ham-radio-centric and scanner control/programming apps that aren't supported by Win7 and later. Yesterday I installed my newly purchased copy of Spectrum Commander IX into the XP VM (alongside ScanCAT Gold) and proceeded to "try" to get things to work.

The Optocom only seems to function if it's put into 535 Emulation Mode, although both SC-IX and ScanCAT have native support for Optocom "native" mode. (A DOS VM allows me to run the config utility and switch between modes if needed). I spent a considerable amount of time tweaking ScanCAT to actually scan and stop using the Opto, but cannot get SC-IX to scan and stop no matter what I try. Note that if I run SC-IX's Spectrum Analyzer against a band with known activity (say, the NOAA WX segment) I'll see signal peaks but when in "scan" mode the S-meter function doesn't indicate anything. I can "pause" the scan, enter a frequency manually and the Opto will tune to it - but with no S meter reading. Note that if I'm in Emulation mode I can hear the station I tuned but if I try this while in Opto Native mode, nothing. The Opto's setting were adjusted with its config program to allow for Local speaker control, and to turn the speaker on - but the results were the same.

Would love to talk with users who have successfully gotten Optocom receivers running on Spectrum Commander. I know there are a few on the forum, and hopefully you're still active.

Thanks!

 

[theoldcop]

John,
I apologize for chiming in with no solution. I, too, have an Optocom unit and used to run SC on an older PC. I would love to get the combination going again (or at least give it a try) but I cannot, for the life of me, remember what the name of the license file is. I do have it (license/registration file) but don’t know where it would be located in the file system so I could transfer it to my new PC.
Do you remember and could you give me the name?
Thank you and again, I apologize for the interruption.

 

[N8YX]

The license file came in a text document attached to the product registration - download link email. It'll be named something like 'X012345.txt' and have your purchase number plus other registration info inside.

 

[theoldcop]

Thank you!

 

[N8YX]

Update for anyone who happens to run into the same thing I did:

SC-IX is now running on one of my shack computers - a Win7-32 setup. Scan Star's site states that Windows XP is the last supported Microsoft OS but the program installed and was configured without issue. At the moment I have my Optocom and an OS-535 equipped Pro-2035 running concurrently, with the Optocom in Opto mode. All features of both radios (including scan stop and S-meter function) work as intended.

The issue with running this software in a VM appears to be related to the comm functions implemented by Signal Intelligence; possibly with their driver as well. I'd tried installing the program into an XP VM on the Win7 host ("XP Compatibility Mode"), configuring the ports as described here and executing the software. No combination of flow control, UART emulation and so forth allowed the program to talk to the radios. An experiment was tried using PuTTY and TeraTerm with a loopback connector on each of the COM ports; however those programs open the ports, it seems to work fine and characters are received as they're typed.

My original attempt was on a Mint Tricia (19.3) system running VirtualBox 6.1.16. The comm drivers worked "somewhat" but would eventually cause the VM to throw a SerialIOportError the first time the radios stopped on a busy channel and sent data back to the host. There's a bug filed against the 6.1 version of VB (seen here) and it's still present in the latest test build (142777 as of earlier in the week). Note that using Xon/Xoff instead of "no flow control" will hasten the occurrence of the error, and this is seen anecdotally around the 'Net.

The same Linux host was used to test the installation and operation under Wine, CrossOver and PlayonLinux. While the program installed correctly it won't receive characters back from the scanner when data is sent to one of them. A similar test involving PuTTY and TeraTerm was done from Wine to check Com port functionality. PuTTY communicated in loopback mode through a Com port just fine. TeraTerm only returns every third or fourth character sent. Again, I suspect shenanigans in the comm handling routine when a redirector is inserted in the path and Wine is known for sub-optimal serial device support.

Next test is going to involve installing VMWare Worskation Player 16, exporting a VB XP VM into it and trying the platform and program through that hypervisor.

 

[waynedc]

I have two Optocoms operating on a Windows 10 desktop using DOSBox and the awesome Probe v7.0 software. It is by far my go-to solution for fast scanning of milair frequencies. I am very glad I kept the Probe software around and did not trash it when I got rid of Spectrum Commander. These connect via a USB to 9-pin serial adaptor and I have configured two ports - COM3 / COM4 to be set aside just for DOSBox. I have tried in the past to use this same setup on my Win10 computer but running through VMWare on a copy of Win7 and I think I got a little faster scan rate out of Probe. I might explore that a little more...

 

[N8YX]

I bought a copy of ProbeV7 as well, Wayne. Have one instance running in a DOSBox session and another in DOSEMU - so I know the serial ports on this host system work!

Now have two Optocoms, an OS-535-equipped Pro-2035 and a few other Optoelectronics devices to experiment with here, so I can do A/B comparisons of software and hardware in real-time. Also managed to get a couple PCR1000s so I'll be adding Probe1K to my software collection.

Still not giving up on the hypervisor boondoggle, though.

 

[N8YX]

Bit more of an update:

Tried running Spectrum Commander IX out of a VMWare Player (v16.0) XP VM and it works smashingly well. Except for the fact you cannot access multiport serial devices (or any other type of I/O card, for that matter) if it's on the PCI bus. Well-documented gotcha of Player and Workstation; ESXi purportedly has direct-access support but I don't have my bare-metal system on which to install it completed at this time.

VMWare Player supposedly allows serial-to-USB converter pass-through operation. I ordered a few different USB expander cards to try, if for nothing else than to move all the USB devices currently connected to the motherboard's USB ports off of them. FWIW, any mobo-installed serial or parallel port can be accessed by Player, so those of us with 4 native ports won't have to jump through the particular hoop if legacy OS support w/ IO is required. You can access all the devices directly.

Would be nice if VirtualBox gets fixed, as it sees PCI-connected adapters just fine. Only one of the five COM ports in this particular system has its hardware on the motherboard; the rest are provided via a PCIE 4-port serial card.

 

[N8YX]

Thread bump:

I installed the latest test build of VB (6.1.19; build 142964) and the serial port issue appears fixed. Two instances of ProScan in a Win10 Pro guest running at 19.2K and Spectrum Commander IX in an XP-SP3 guest controlling an OS-535 equipped Pro-2035 at 9.6K are running concurrently. A lot of data in and out; no issues observed other than W10's usual instability - but to be fair, it'll behave similarly if I boot to bare metal on this platform and use it as the native OS. More tuning required, but the guests are working. I owe some developer a beer or twelve.

 

[N8YX]

More feedback:

Apparently there's a bug in VirtualBox with the way a Win10 guest's CPUid is handled and certain bits being set; the condition causes a crash/reboot to occur. A number of VB users have reported the condition - which is happening with my ProScan-enabled Win10 VM. Running a Win7-32 Pro VM w/ ProScan 7.15 on the same hypervisor works fine. Now we cross our fingers and wait for a fix...