Version 3.25, 26-11-2003

NEW FEATURES

• COMPORT IRQs

  Turbolog's SETUP will now accept IRQs >8. This was requested by numerous users since quite some time in order to fully exploit all interface features provided by the programme. It was less a problem under pure DOS but quite annoying under WINDOWS. We had to face this task within the development work for TL4 in order to maintain compatibility between the various WINDOWS versions.

  While COM1 and COM2 never were a problem in the past activating COM3 and COM4 was rather difficult and was depending on the internal use of IRQs in the particular machine. With allowing for the higher IRQs there are more degrees of freedom in finding an IRQ which is still unused by other PC-devices. The following couples turned out to work fine on my machine:

  COM3 IRQ10 (e.g. for ....CW)

  COM4 IRQ9 (e.g. for ...CAT)

  COM1 and COM2 will be used for packet and multimode in most cases. Surprisingly COM4 also worked with IRQ2 on my machine.

  Please note: Of course you will need a piece of hardware to plug into your PC allowing to extend the number of COM ports. This board will need to be configured in terms of COM port base address and IRQ with respect to your PC configuration. This should not be a problem if you start under pure DOS. Under WINDOWS, however, you additionally need to coordinate the assignment of COM port parameters with the operating system. This is indeed the most important and first step in the setup procedure. Before you can activate the COM ports you must define their base address and IRQ number under the WINDOWS System Menu. Furthermore, this is the spot to load a suitable hardware driver which should be provided by the manufacturer of the port extender board.

• Follwing Ivan's (G4BGW) investigation on the ARRL's counting scheme for the US-States we changed the States keyword file, STATES.UID. Maryland & District of Columbia count as only one state, not separately.

• There is good news to report on TL3`s compatibility with the ARRL's project LOTW ( Logbook Of The World). Several TL3-users have reported that they successfully uploaded their logbook from TL3 into LOTW. This in turn leads to conclude that TL3's ADIF export facility is fully compliant with the ARRL's LOTW standards.

COUNTRY.DAT:

• The name of East Timor ( 4W ) was changed into Timor Leste following the ARRL's decision to rename this entity.

Outlook for version 3.26:

• Continued service for TurboLog 3: Updates on COUNTRY.DAT, bug fixes ( hopefully not necessary....hi )
• Main emphasis, however, on TurboLog 4, the WINDOWS version of which a release candidate 1 is to be offered soon!
• Etc. etc.....

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