[App_rpt-users] Good Laugh

[Alan Adamson]

An hour ago, I wouldn't have suggested the title, but the further I get away
from it the more I just set back and laugh.

Here's what happened.

At about noon today I was talking to a friend on my repeater, it was linked
to Allstar.  I decided to switch to my simplex base.  When I did I had this
annoying giddie-up tick tick tick sounds.  It sounded like packet lost, but
was very rhythmic.  I couldn't figure out where it was coming from.

I checked the obvious, swapped cables, swapped URI's, tore down all the
links, isolated just that one and used the iaxrpt client to see if I could
start to take things out of the equation.  I replaced the switch that
everything was connected too.  Still there.

Next I rolled back recent svn changes thinking it must have been in one of
those.  Now the strange thing was that it was isolated to only one URI, and
only the TX side of it.

I confirmed that with Echolink, IRLP echo reflector, ever way I could think
of.  Now at this point, it was going on 2 hours of debug time.  Next I
started pulling out features I had enabled.  All along trying to remember
when I knew the last time was that it sounded good and what had changed.  I
even went to the effort rebuilding the ALSA drivers.  Still the problem.  I
was at a loss.  I was about to send a note asking if anyone else had ever
seen this when I thought.. Hmm I wonder if it's the Transmitter.

I pressed its PTT and the sound was there, so I pulled all the cables
attached to it and did it again. Yep, still there.  Powered it off and back
on and everything was perfect again.  Hooked everything back up, rolled all
my changes back in, rebooted and poof it came right up, not issues
whatsoever.

Damn, just goes to show you. it's always the *simple* things.. But in this
case it was the last thing I checked :(.

So, 4hrs of debug, and it was as simple as resetting the TX.  At some point,
it had got into a strange state. You can bet I won't make the mistake again!

Alan
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