PRACTICAL PC CAPABILITY GUIDELINES FOR RSP OPERATION

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glovisol
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PRACTICAL PC CAPABILITY GUIDELINES FOR RSP OPERATION

Post by glovisol » Fri Jun 07, 2019 6:48 am

THIS POST STARTED FOR REMOVING AMENDMENT DIFFICULTIES. Go o next post.

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glovisol
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Re: PRACTICAL PC CAPABILITY GUIDELINES FOR RSP OPERATION

Post by glovisol » Fri Jun 07, 2019 7:27 am

WINDOWS OPERATING SYSTEM
Starting with Windows XP, all the following work well with SDRuno: W7, W8 & W10.

BARE MINIMUM PC
- Dual Core Intel operating at 2 GHz. Example: Intel Core Duo CPU T7300 @ 2 GHz.
- Operating system 32 bit.
- Mechanical 250 Gb system disk
- RAM 3 GB.
- WINDOWS 7 PRO.

With this equipment one single receiver can be operated with Decimation of 1 with some overload difficulties. Best operation with Decimation settings at 4 or more. Some capacity & speed can be improved by going to ADVANCED SYSTEM SETTINGS, settings: PERSONALISED and unchecking most of the special options. Reducing the number of applications running in background to bare minimum and number of icons on the desktop also helps. Operation with just 2 VRX's is difficult and can be sustained for a short time only. RSPduo in SINGLE mode operates as any other RSP, but does not work in DUAL, as Sdr & Sys levels become prohibitive in a few seconds. Just to give an idea, a used IBM/LENOVO X61 laptop (year of manufacture 2010) equipped with 3 GB RAM in good condition retails on ebay for $100 approx.

FAULTLESS OPERATION PC
- Five Core Intel operating at 2.6 GHz. Example: Intel Core i5-4300M CPU @ 2.6 GHz.
- Operating system 64 bit for x64 based processor.
- 128 Gb Solid state system disk
- RAM 8 GB.
- WINDOWS 10.

No operational limitations could be found with this equipment. Sdr & Sys levels stay at minimum most times. The number of VRX's available depends only on display capacity. RSPduo dual tuner operation works faultlessly. Just to give an idea, a used LENOVO T540p (year of manufacture 2015) equipped with 8 MB RAM retails on ebay for approx. $ 250 to 350, depending on condition.

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Paul
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Re: PRACTICAL PC CAPABILITY GUIDELINES FOR RSP OPERATION

Post by Paul » Fri Jun 07, 2019 9:25 am

Hi there
I deleted my previous "reply" as being too lengthy and detailed.
May I offer a sort of addendum to the forgoing post by glovisol.
I was using a laptop with a spec which certainly exceeded the forgoing minima, using Windows10 and SDRuno to run a RSPduo together with a RSP2 and simultaneously with a good quality RTL device under SDR#.
It proved impossible for me however, to operate the RSP's together under V1.3/1.31, unless the RSP2 was in ZIF mode (invoking LIF would cause an instantaneous crash).
i won't go into detail, but the diagnosis by the ever-responsive (and patient) SDRplay support/development team was inadequate USB (USB 2) resources.
I replaced the laptop with a later version of the same make/model (for info USB 3.0/3,1) and now run this perfectly successfully, which I feel tends to confirm the team's diagnosis.
I hope that this may prove helpful to someone with an otherwise suitable computer if faced with a similar problem.

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glovisol
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Re: PRACTICAL PC CAPABILITY GUIDELINES FOR RSP OPERATION

Post by glovisol » Fri Jun 07, 2019 11:15 am

Hi Paul, it is good to share our experiences with host PC's. The PC's offer our foundation for RSP operation, so the more we know about their performance with respect th the RSP's, the better. However in my post I was mainly considering the problem of the guy who wishes to get his feet wet with an RSP and then wonders if his PC is up to the task, because one thing is to buy the RSP, another to have to buy a new PC as well. So my post concerns just one RSP operating with SDRuno 1.31.

Obviously, in the case I presented, only one USB connection was used. In your case three USB connections are used and thus three times the work for the USB interface: good to know what the limitations are in this case!

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Paul
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Re: PRACTICAL PC CAPABILITY GUIDELINES FOR RSP OPERATION

Post by Paul » Fri Jun 07, 2019 3:18 pm

Of course Gianfranco (if I may use your name)
The intent of your post was quite clear and I merely offered mine as "additional" information for whatever use it might be should anyone experience similar problems.

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glovisol
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Re: PRACTICAL PC CAPABILITY GUIDELINES FOR RSP OPERATION

Post by glovisol » Sat Jun 08, 2019 8:13 am

While on the subject of using laptops for RSP operation, I wish to bring up the problem of laptop radiation as well. As far as my experience goes, if one uses a double shielded, ferrite suppressed cable (expensive!) coducted interference/noise along the USB path is very easy to control. Interference radiation is another animal and very much depends on the laptop PC used.

With the IBM LENOVO X61 I experienced radiated noise/interference from 14 MHz and up. With the LENOVO T540p the radiation problem is at 2 Mhz and below. So far the top remedy is to locate the RSP as far away as possible from the PC and this is easy with an amplified USB cable, as mentioned here. Even keeping the RSP in the same room , but at a distance from the PC can eliminate interference completely.

https://www.sdrplay.com/community/viewt ... ved#p11652

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someYguy
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Re: PRACTICAL PC CAPABILITY GUIDELINES FOR RSP OPERATION

Post by someYguy » Mon Jun 10, 2019 7:39 pm

I use an older Dell Optiplex 360 duo core, 4gb RAM, running Windows 7 pro/32bit. I use HDSDR for HF, SDRSharp r1361 for VHF/UHF. With this, I can run full 10mhz span with no dropouts and good speed. CPU load averages 30-50%. Said computer is dedicated only to the radio and has no other software installed.

I've tried both SDR Console and SDRUno on this machine and they do not perform as well as the above mentioned programs but that may be isolated to my machine.

I've also successfully used the RSP with Windows XP on an even older machine but at much lower bandwidth of course.....

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qupes
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Re: PRACTICAL PC CAPABILITY GUIDELINES FOR RSP OPERATION

Post by qupes » Wed Jun 12, 2019 6:31 pm

someYguy wrote:I use an older Dell Optiplex 360 duo core, 4gb RAM, running Windows 7 pro/32bit. I use HDSDR for HF, SDRSharp r1361 for VHF/UHF. With this, I can run full 10mhz span with no dropouts and good speed. CPU load averages 30-50%. Said computer is dedicated only to the radio and has no other software installed.

I've tried both SDR Console and SDRUno on this machine and they do not perform as well as the above mentioned programs but that may be isolated to my machine.

I've also successfully used the RSP with Windows XP on an even older machine but at much lower bandwidth of course.....
Is there a specific reason you're using WIN 7/XP?
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sdrom33
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Re: PRACTICAL PC CAPABILITY GUIDELINES FOR RSP OPERATION

Post by sdrom33 » Fri Jun 14, 2019 4:30 am

Why, there are many advantages in using XP or W7. XP especially, because having less frills than the newer O.S.'s use less processor & memory power, leaving more for Sdrplay or the other software you use for controlling the RSP. If you scratch the surface, all operating systems after XP are still really XP in disguise. XP has been the O.S.that brought Windows to maturity from toy land. Thus it makes sense to stick to XP if you use a less powerful PC.

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someYguy
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Re: PRACTICAL PC CAPABILITY GUIDELINES FOR RSP OPERATION

Post by someYguy » Wed Jun 19, 2019 8:03 pm

qupes wrote:
someYguy wrote:I use an older Dell Optiplex 360 duo core, 4gb RAM, running Windows 7 pro/32bit. I use HDSDR for HF, SDRSharp r1361 for VHF/UHF. With this, I can run full 10mhz span with no dropouts and good speed. CPU load averages 30-50%. Said computer is dedicated only to the radio and has no other software installed.

I've tried both SDR Console and SDRUno on this machine and they do not perform as well as the above mentioned programs but that may be isolated to my machine.

I've also successfully used the RSP with Windows XP on an even older machine but at much lower bandwidth of course.....
Is there a specific reason you're using WIN 7/XP?
sdrom33 wrote:Why, there are many advantages in using XP or W7. XP especially, because having less frills than the newer O.S.'s use less processor & memory power, leaving more for Sdrplay or the other software you use for controlling the RSP. If you scratch the surface, all operating systems after XP are still really XP in disguise. XP has been the O.S.that brought Windows to maturity from toy land. Thus it makes sense to stick to XP if you use a less powerful PC.
Exactly.

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