smart cat default ports

W3DCB · December 2014

Dear Friends: Smart Cat always defaults to Com Ports 4 and 14. These Ports on my computer are already in use for some other purpose and I do not wish to relinquish Ports 4 and 14. Is any one out there familiar enough with the Smart Cat software to instruct me in changing this default to a different value? I have looked into the Cfg Catclasses program which seems to name the default...Can any one instruct me in what change to make to delineate a different default value?

Thanks in advance!

Daniel

W3DCB

Tim - W4TME · December 2014

Daniel - first there is not a want to manually set the default port pair, because when the system is working properly, SmartCAT will not conflict with already installed physical and virtual com ports.

Second is the reason for the conflict. I eluded to system above. The system is SmartCAT running on Windows. What SmartCAT does when it starts up is to perform a system call to Windows for it to enumerate or return information on all of the active com ports running on the PC. In a perfect world, Windows would fulfill this request for the active com ports with the correct information. In reality, Windows does a very poor job of enumerating virtual com ports. This is not a new problem with virtual com ports, as it has been around for many years before SmartCAT was created. We have been running into this type of issue in Support for years.

I suspect that some of the com ports are not physical UARTS and the existing com4 or com 14 you have defined is a virtual com port.

At this time there is no workaround other than manually making sure that no other device is using com4 or com 14.

W4YXU · December 2014

I have the same problem and have found 2 work-arounds:

1. Just delete the 4-14pair then create another pair.

Cat doesn't (Last time I did it) remember that you deleted the port and creates 5-15 . Sometimes I have to re-boot to elimate evidence of the conflict and allow the previous occupant of com4 to continue using it.

2: RUN "regedit" and search for "comm" and there will be a list of ALL serial ports over in the comments field (Along with a bunch of other stuff!). This includes those from CAT, VSPE and Win7. VSPE ports are there but the "device manager" usually can't see them.

FWIW - CAT does seem to respect FlexControl knob using com4.

Jim
W4YXU

Dudley-WA5QPZ · December 2014

Daniel,

You can force the Default com port to a different port pair by

First create a new Dedicated Port pair in the Serial Port tab of SmartSDR
Now highlight the new pair in the Virtual Ports list in the Serial Port tab
Select "Change Assigned Port"
Verify that the "Default " port has changed in the "Main" tab.

Then you can delete the undesirable port pair in the Virtual Port listing in the "Serial Port" tab.

Dudley

W3DCB · December 2014

To everyone who answered, thanks so very much! However, I have done that. I assigned a new dedicated pair...I removed the 4/14 pair. It works fine until the next time I re-start the computer. My new pair is there as expected. However, that blasted 4/14 pair re-appears again and again. So as not to have a conflict, I have to remove/uninstall the 4/14 pair each time my computer is restarted...Adding a new pair ain't so easy either. When I press add a new pair, it picks the next set...You guessed it, 5/15...Then 6/16...and so on and so on. I have to let them all fill up until I got to past 16....Ports 1 through 16 are ports defined by my Tactical Software...That is no problem. It was just tedious to finally get the new pair in a set that is not in use...However, again, each time I re-start the computer, 4/14 is there again!

de Daniel W3DCB

smart cat default ports

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