Flex5000a /Hercules Controller - which OS and monitor

Paul 2e0ymt

Greetings from Manchester - I recently acquired this setup and are very excited to get it working asap. The only spare PC's I have use XP and not ideal for this so I have ordered an i7 great spec PC for starters.

I would be grateful for some advice on which OS to go for Win7 or Win10. Furthermore, would an LED monitor with VGA input be good enough and how about EMF (SAMSUNG S27D590C)

Thanks 73, Paul 2E0YMT

Rick

Get plenty of RAM....at least 4 but 8 is better. I don't think your monitor choice is an issue but make sure it has a good video card and firewire port. Of course you are out of luck without the necessary firewire port unless in has an open slot for a card. I like Win7 and have no experience yet with 10, although I hear that PowerSDR runs fine with 10 especially when you do a clean install from scratch to a Win 10 machine. I have had some RFI issues, but you can probably deal with any that might crop up by getting inside the computer and adding ferrites.

Good luck! The 5000A is a superior radio.
73
Rick, W2JAZ

Patrick Greenlee

I had no difficulty running my Flex 5000A on my XP machine but it wasn't the bottom of the line computer.

I am currently running the F5K on Win 10  on a 4 year old computer, having upgraded 2 out of our 5 computers from W7 to W10. (Some are not compatible.) If you are familiar with W7 you will have no problem with W10.  You don't need the top of the line gamer box.  My neighbor runs his Flex on W8.x on a laptop with no problems (beyond those which cause him to hate W8.x... (not radio related)

My justification for buying fairly hot 'puters is not because I NEED all the horse power right away but it helps forestall obsolescence. 

Best of luck to you with your new 'puter.

73,

Patrick        NJ5G

Paul 2e0ymt

Hello Rick and thanks for the quick reply. Are you using win7 32/64 bit ?

Win10 is future proof I guess as im doing a clean install on new HDD but only if it will all operate including the controller, be nice to see if anyone else is using that.

Have a great day and thanks for your time.

73 Paul 2E0YMT

Rick

I use the 64 bit flavor You should be fine with Win 10. I used to run the Hercules box for control and then decided to part with it and bought the Flex controller. It's been enough for my needs. 
Enjoy the radio Paul! It's a keeper.
Rick

Paul 2e0ymt

Thanks Partrick/Rick.

I am naturally leaning toward win10 now, my controller Hercules Mp3 e2 also has win10 drivers it seems so it looks promising. It would be nice to hear from somebody using win10 with the f5k and hercules to doubly make sure !!

Evening & 73, Paul 2E0YMT

Paul 2e0ymt

Update: After reading a lot of the replies and private emails I decided to hold on the i7 and instead I upgraded my 2.5GHz quad core PC by installing Win7 x64 and also adding another 4gb ram giving it 8gb. After getting the basics installed and PSDR working (on dummy load) it shows the statistics with CPU never going aboth 19% so it looks promising unless having real signals to compute makes a big difference ?

Anyway, my question now is regarding ouput power of the device from 6m to 160m. I set the tune to 100% and using the fwd pwr function on the radio I get the following results :-
6=92w, 10=104w, 12=68w, 15=91w, 17=82w, 20=89w, 30=89w, 40=88w, 60=89w, 80=92w, 160=90w

Are these values normal as 12m @ 68w is a little low.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Paul 2E0YMT

Tim - W4TME

No, those low values (below 90W) are not normal.  It will take a full recalibration of the radio in one of our service centers (US or Germany) to restore full power on all bands.

Paul 2e0ymt

Hello Tim - Thanks for the quick reply, well thats a dissapointing start for me. I guess Germany is closest to where I am. I presume there will be a charge, do you know what it is please to put it right. Also, is this common ? Is it likely some other parts are failing as a result.

TIA Paul

Tim - W4TME

This is usually a quick repair, even if there is something wrong with the PA filter banks, which can cause low power output.  I suspect that is is an hour or two at the most to repiar.  I recommend you contact Norbert and talk with him about it (frs-service-eu@t-online.de)

Paul 2e0ymt

Hi Tim - Thank you and yes I have already had some dialogue with Norbert in Germany (via Klaus) regarding the issue and plan to send it there tomorrow all being well. Hopefully it can be corrected quickly and returned to put into use.

Thanks for the info.

73 Paul