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1989-12-15
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78 lines
Quick notes on NA v4.13
* All known bugs from the ARRL 10M contest have been fixed - check the end of
NA.DOC for the details, but support for that contest is pretty solid now
(W8WD made 1900+ QSOs on SSB from my station using it).
* When you edit a prior QSO, NA must rescore all succeeding QSOs to reflect
the consequences of the edit (revise dupes, mults, etc.). With VERY large
log files, this rescoring can take some time. For example, editing QSO #1
in a 1900+ log file takes around 15 seconds on a 20 MHz 386 machine using
version 4.13, and longer on slower machines. You should keep this in mind
if you are going to do extensive prior edits on large log files real-time
during a contest. I stand in admiration at how fast K1EA's CT rescores the
log as the result of an edit, and one of my primary goals for NA is to
improve its performance in this area.
* COMMENTS PLEASE!
I thought it might be good to build the HELP SCREEN directly into the
program, rather than as a separate file. The advantage of the separate
file is that you can customize it as you want. The advantages of building
it in is that I can make sure the HELP SCREEN matches the version of the
program, and there is one less file to mess with. Does anybody like or use
this feature?
Along those same lines, the .MLT files for NAS, NAQP & SS are pretty
common, so perhaps they should be built in too. In particular, SS uses the
standard abbreviations from the official ARRL summary sheet. The .CTY table
for ARRL 10m definitely needs to be customizable, for the same reasons as CT.
Would anyone object to mandatory standard abbreviations?
* PLEASE NOTE!
NA is starting to see wide usage, as lots of guys are asking for disks.
This is good, but leads to problems such as no postage, bad disks, etc.
These problems are minor in small doses, but are starting to be a big
headache here.
NA is provided free, as a service to the contest community. To get a copy,
all I ask for is a WORKING floppy disk, and a SELF-ADDRESSED AND STAMPED
disk mailer. Please check your floppy disk before sending it by formatting
it. I don't mind affixing postage or return address labels to re-use disk
mailers, but please try to make my job as easy as possible. If your friends
are interested in NA, please pass this info along too.
I recently received a disk (which was defective) in a disk mailer with no
return postage. Under these circumstances, there was not much that I was
willing to do...
* COMING ATTRACTIONS
- Improve rescore speed
- CW sending support for LPT1 & LPT2, using the K1EA interface scheme
- Support for radios with RS232 interfaces. K8CC now is the proud owner of
an ICOM IC765, so I have all of the documentation to make ICOM radios
talk to NA. Anyone who has a digital radio with an RS232 interface and
would like to have auto-bandswitching of the computer, etc. should send me
whatever documentation they have. This includes TS940/950, OMNI-V, etc.
- Capacity for more QSOs. Right now NA can handle 2619 QSOs, which is a
limit due to the complier used. This is not a big problem since the
contests NA supports rarely have logs bigger than this (ARRL 10M is a
possible exception). Microsoft has advised a way to program around this
limitation, so a future version will allow larger log files. How large?
The trade-off is memory space. Right now, NA needs about 448K available
RAM to run. With DOS 4.0 getting larger, TSRs, etc., I want to minimize
problems with running NA on 640K machines.
As always, your comments are appreciated.
73,
Dave Pruett, K8CC
home: (313) 481-0755
work: (313) 493-2168