01 Feb 2011
-----------
The disk problem on the XP networked PC probably started
here.


15 Feb 2011
-----------
Discovered that we had in Tromso a spare industrial rack-mounted PC 
as part of the Halley sounder spares.
Testing the spare rack-PC from Halley, with the new-looking
133 MHz Pentium.
I put in the two SKY boards (from BAS), a CRAM board and an
ADC board. Used external +/-15V power supply for the ADC,
and a 10MHz signal from a spare HP synth, with 2Vp-p sine.
The B-mode soundings run.

I also installed 'our' software concerning the 130MB RAMdisk.

But Andrew Senior's BPMode41.exe does not. Gives SR=-1
just like on Svalbard. So it not just a quirk of the PC up there.
The motherboards are identical with the on up there.
P-modes from the BAS directory do work.

16 Feb 2011
-----------
Also tried BMODE40 /raws20r0 but a similar message appears:
"<time>  0Ps 2159Es  14030   -1
 waiting for Sky2 to finish"
PC hung at the end.
The sounding takes about the right time to run.

Tried using the later Pet-2000, ex U/VPC motherboard, with 
a Pentium 333 MHz clock, speculating that the 133 MHz speed
may be the cause. (The tromso sounder PC has a 450 or so MHz PC.)
But exactly the same errors.

Compare the Tromso sounder SKY boards with the BAS spares: 
Jumper settings etc. all the same except one.
Found one jumper (P2) which was on the spare boards but not
on the TOS boards. However removing it made no difference.

I tried swapping the spare SKY boards with the Tromso 
sounder boards. The spares work in Tromso sounder and 
those from the sounder still result in errors when put in
the spare PC.
(In doing the test with spare SKY boards in the
Tromso sounder, I first forgot to switch on the external
ADC power suppply. Then one does get exactly the same 
errors with a hung PC, again incriminating the 
ADC board. Turning on the power made things work.)

I put the spare ADC board in the Tromso sounder
and then I ALSO get the SAME ERROR as above with a 
hung PC at the end.

Putting the tromso ADC in the spare PC is not so easy
at present.

My conclusion:
The failure of BPmode4x/raws20rx to run on Svalbard
is reproducible in an apparently identical spare PC.
It seems independent of motherboard speed, and SKY boards,
and probably CRAM board. It seems to be caused by the
ADC board. These boards are non-commercial 'homemade'
with slight differences in the mechanical and electrical
external connections. There are no jumpers or anything
like that, in fact rather few components.

But the ADC board seems to work with the old bmode
and pmode soundings. What is different about the new
sounding scheme that makes the ADC so crucial to the
success of the BMODE4x soundings ?

19 Feb 2011
-----------
"This afternoon at about 13:30 UT (19 Feb 2011) I put
in a spare preamplifier in the west antenna.
There are several indications that the signal from that
antenna is much improved."

The indications mentioned above are: less audible hiss on
Rx 1, no strong tone below about 2 MHz, oscilloscope traces
that look equal on all four antennas.


20 Feb 2011.
-----------

Moved new XP PC dyna to container.

"Starting from LR125259.B_G (11-02-20 2106UT) analysis for Svalbard is done 
without the correction.
And yes, the analysis is certainly improved."

21 Feb 2011
-----------
Terrible weather. near zero temp and much wind, snow drifts
half fill the hole to the dynasonde container door within 1 hour.

Anyway, got monitor connected to dyna in the container.

Put in the spare SKY boards. BPmode41.exe works now.
SR:1 with the original 8-pulse version, and with SR:2 for 
a 4-pulse version. But why does the SNR plot in real-time
only show values in a band between 70 and 130 or so km ?
See a few BPG mode files made.

Left the spare SKY boards in and closed the PC lid.
I still wonder a little bit whether it really is the SKY
boards or the possible  better insertion of the ADC board
in the ISA slot. (I had to remove the ADC and CRAM borads to change
the SKY boards because of thin coaxes in the way).

Tried a sentry reboot also.

Postscript, added 20120714
==========================
Looking at the SKY boards taken out of the Halley sounder,
we see that they are a different version: SKY321 and not
SKY320 which we have at Tromso. Presumably the spares
that went to Svalbard and are in there now were SKY320.
------------------------------------------------------------

Power break 20110314

The new networked PC did not start up. BIOS settings wrong !

20110329
--------
The networked PC was started up today, but still only noise
seen. Probably on Dummy load still after power up.
Tried fixing this from Peru but I got it wrong.


20110404
========
From 07:54 UT the dynasonde is working again. I got the 
program to switch to antenna by:
J:\anton.exe AntOn    
in the c:\fais\start.bat file on the Windows XP machine (158.39.70.141)

The program anton.exe is in the directory c:\fais\ on the XP PC, and this 
is the networked drive J: on dyn PC.

Note that the amplitud.txt file from Svalbard has 6 values
 which is wrong.
It should be 4.
From 09:36 UT on 4 April the amplitudes should be correct, for 4 ants