Lightning damage... can't see my 5000 :-(

Mike W1BFA in Maine

We took a lightning strike a week and a half ago which managed to **** the top off a 80 pine 100 feet from the house as well as decimate (melt) 1/4 of my 160 loop as well as hit the house.  The antennas were all unhooked but unfortunately nothing else except some of the AC.  So far we have replaced one TV, three set top boxes, cable amp, modem and wireless router, data switch, cordless phone base, regular pots phone, rotor control, computer (motherboard and power supply gone), a few wall warts.  6500, Maestro and the PC for that radio are fine and happy...  Unfortunately I just received the replacement PC, put the SIIG firewire card in, lit it up and loaded software, PC sees the card and says its happy but no sign of it seeing the 5000a.  5000 lights up and smells fine but does not communicate with the PC.

Any suggestions before I call in the big guns?  thanks   Mike in Maine

Tim - W4TME

Was the PC connected to the 5000 the one that was replaced due to damage?  If so, try the other Firewire port on the radio.  It is possible one port is blown while the other one is fine.

DH2ID

What does the Flex FW driver say? What is your OS? 7 or 10?
Try reinstalling PSDR 2.7.2. I use the modified PSDR by KE9NS.
http://www.ke9ns.com/flexpage.html
73, Alex - DH2ID

Mike W1BFA in Maine

Yup, the pc that was toast was the primary PC fpr the 5000.  I replaced it with a new windows 10 machine and put in the Siig 2 port card that was in the damaged PC.  Tim,  you're a partial winner today!  I switched to the second firewire port on the 5k and the eprom stuff updated with exceptions ( I didn't jot down) and now PSDR 2.7.2 sees the 5K and connects to it.  You can issue commands in PSDR and hear some clicking etc and PSDR acts and responds to commands but the 5K doesn't show any signs of wanting to be a radio.  Am I getting close to "box time" ??   Mike

Tim - W4TME

Change the sampling rate down to 48k to see if a slower data rate works better.  If that is the case, then it may be the Firewire card.  We are starting to see incompatibilities with new PCs running Win10 using TI chipset based Firewire cards

Mike W1BFA in Maine

hmmmm?  When I changed it I got an "invalid stream pointer" and "unhandled exception" error I believed it was.  I stopped PSDR. closed it and powered the 5K off then on again and now it says its doing a firmware update but showing no sign of progress on the bar yet..   the plot thickens....  Mike

Tim - W4TME

The constant firmware update messages are indicative of the PC not fully communicating with the radio.  I think it might be time to open a HelpDesk ticket as I suspect the 5000 will need to be checked out and that will require an RMA number.

Mike W1BFA in Maine

Ok Tim, I just started.   Thanks a bunch.   Wish me luck, have a great weekend!

Tim - W4TME

GL OM 73