Difficulty connecting flex 5000

[W4tty]

I am seriously considering throwing myself down a long flight of stairs, however, maybe I can get this thing figured out yet....but...I need some help.

I recently ungraded my computer from a dell 4th generation i7 which ran windows 10 and powersdr worked well for many years. I just replaced my PC with a shiny new dell i9 14900, 64 gb ram and windows 11. Geforce rtx 3050 video card and 500w power supply. I have all updates performed and the computer works well and is blazing fast. However, getting powersdr to work has been a nightmare.


here is what I have done:

I have gotten my dpc latency down to levels that, according to latency mon are acceptable for real time audio, etc.

I have a new startech firewire card with Ti chipset.

I had three IRQ conflicts between sound card, 1394 card, and sound card again...All three were on IRQ 17. Using MSI util I now have the 1394 card in sole possession of IRQ 17 and the two audio ports now have msi with no conflicts.

A new firewire cable.

I had trouble getting newest firewire driver to work so loaded the legacy driver and have finally gotten the Flex.exe program to recognize the radio.

I can get power sdr to run in demo mode with no issues. However under the audio tab I do see "unrecognized sound card" The sound card on my PC is a Cirrus onboard audio card.

When I turn the radio on and load PDSR it comes up but when I hit START I get nothing on the panadapter display as if there is no stream going between the radio and the PC and the rec signal strength meter reads -245 dbm.

I love this radio and dont want to replace it........but.........maybe I have to......

Any ideas or thoughts are appreciated. I have tried everything i know to try and have performed all of the suggestions on the KE9NS web page.

73,

Adam W4TTY

[ke9ns]

Always make sure windows Control panel->Power Options-> is set to High performance so all the CPU cores stay on all the time.
Also, I also always set PowerSDR Setup->General->Options->Process Priority to "Real Time" (for a modern PC with lots of CPU cores)
You can also try launching PowerSDR under "Compatibility mode" "Windows 7" (right click on the PowerSDR icon->Properties)

Maybe take a picture of the entire screen showing the "unrecognized sound card". I have never seen that? Is that under Primary or VAC?

You may want to go into the database folder: %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\FlexRadio Systems\PowerSDR v2.8.0\
Remove all the files with your radios serial#. This will force a factory default just in case something in the database has become corrupted.

Also, I assume you cycled power on the 13.8vdc power supply to the radio (not just the power button)?

The only time I see the panadapter show nothing is after a fresh install (or changing the sample rate) right after you hit the START button.
But it always clears if I hit the STOP/Start a 2nd time.

If you still cannot get it to work, it maybe time to try a FireWire with a non-TI chip?
I have a Dell PC at work and I have tried a few FireWire cards on it with a Flex-5000. Some cards work and some do not. No clear pattern why.
My Ryzen PC works well with a TI chip, but I gotten feedback that other PCs dont work will with TI.

Darrin

[W4tty]

I appreciate your reply and your suggestions have led to progress but not resolution...YET!

So I tried a more methodic approach...Substituting 4 different firewire cards. Installing with windows driver and if that didn't work, rolling the driver back to the legacy driver. The final card was a VIA chipset and when run under the legacy driver gives me a active panadapter and audio stream. But I am getting frequent crashed due to PFN list corrupt and then BSOD. When the PC restarts, and I reopen power sdr I no panadapter or audio stream and stopping and restarting psdr does not change anything. What DOES help is shutting off and then restarting the Flex 5000. If I do that, then I can start power sdr and i get a data stream between the pc and flex and the radio works for a little while and then the whole process repeats itself. I can also make the pc crash if I shut down powersdr and/or close the pdsr window.

Just a quick note about the unrecognized sound card...that only occured with the Startech firewire card and only with regular driver...not with legacy driver. Here is a pic of that screen. I have tried to add a link to a pic below but not sure if I did it right or now. Clicking on the insert image icon above did not work for me.

https://1drv.ms/i/s!Au0iIjLosviEh-JX3T6 ... w?e=xlSW6w

This did not occur with any of the other cards. Also note that the Startech card with Ti chipset didnt see the Flex at all.

So now i am at the BSOD/PFN fault issue. Latency and shared IRQ are not the issue...I am in good shape there. I am running ultimate performance as my power profile and process priority in real time.

Any suggestions where to look next? I have removed Norton antivirus and am using Windows defender. Shutting it off doesnt see to make any difference.

Adam W4TTY

[W4tty]

Could I still be looking at a FireWire issue? Windbg and whocrashed indicate the pfn list corrupt was caused by FlexRadio.sys. My flex has always worked so I am very new to this type of troubleshooting. I REALLY appreciate your help and anyone else’s who reads my posts.

73

Adam W4TTY

[ke9ns]

Latency is only related to the Panadapter Freeze issue.
So if the Pan is freezing, its usually a hardware or driver issue
But not related to a BSOD

Since you say your Flex was working on your last PC, I would say its definitely a Motherboard/FireWire compatibility issue.
I would have figured that between the TI and VIA chip, one would have worked?
I assume you also tried plugging the cards into different PCIe slots on your motherboard (short or long slots)?
Some Slots are wired direct to the CPU and some go through the motherboard chipset.

If your Dell has a thunderbolt port, you may try finding an Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire (I have heard good things from those that use them).

For the BSOD issue, 2 things to try
1) Run the free latency monitor "Latmon.exe" program, but your not using it for latency this time.
When its up and open, click on the Processes tab. And click on the Green Start arrow to get it running
Click on the "Hard Pagefaults" column to display the highest number at the top of the rows. You may need to click twice. (this is related to the PFN)
On my PC usually the worst offender is "msnpeng.exe", this is the real-time component of Windows Defender
You can temporarily disable the windows defender real-time checking just as a test.
But if you see some program causing high number of hard pagefaults, you may try disabling it to see if things get better?

2) Some have reported success by installing PowerSDR in Win7 compatibility mode.
That would mean uninstalling PowerSDR and the Flexradio apps (you can use control panel->programs and features)
then download the full installer and right click on the installer to select Win7 compatibility mode before you install it.


Darrin

[W4tty]

I only have one pcie port so that is the one that has to work. I ordered 4 new firewire cards from Amazon in a variety of configurations. some with both 1394a and 1394b and some with only 1394a. Various chipsets and manufacturers...Figure I would try them all and return the ones that dont work. If I cant fine one that works then I will look into the Thunderbolt option. I did install PSDR in Win7/admin mode and run the program that way as well. I can get the program to run but the the bsod arrives as soon as I stop PSDR. I am goiing to keep working on it and will eventually beat it into submission. Your thoughts and ideas have been very helpful.

73

Adam - W4TTY

[ke9ns]

Is your computer a Dell XPS 8960?
I do see a M.2 wi-fi card on the motherboard. I have a video on running Firewire via M.2.
But also as a test, you may want to disable your WiFi or even unplug the M.2 Wi-Fi card.
A long time ago I ran FireWire on a laptop with WiFi. The WiFi did not get along well with the FireWire.

You may want to check your BIOS to see if there are any settings you can turn off related to either cpu or motherboard power savings, or throttling?
its doubtful but you might get lucky.


Darrin

[W4tty]

Thanks Darrin,

I was gifted a ftdx101 this morning so the flex will go into storage until I decide what to do with it. 73 and thanks again for your thoughts and help.

Adam W4tty

[ke9ns]

OK. Just for future reference.... One more thing to try on newer Win11 PCs is to turn off the "Memory Integrity" feature of Windows Defender.
I did run into a Win11 mini- desktop PC, and PowerSDR would crash with "Memory Integrity" checking enabled. I disabled it (just google for the procedure) and it ran fine after.

Darrin