This year I've had a hard time keeping a TNC on my HF Packet BBS... First a
lightning strike took out the entire station and once I had rebuilt or
replaced all that, the TNC I got for HF didn't work very well.

I never did track down what the problem was with that TNC, but I could tell
that the TNC was the problem because I could hook up the same radio/antenna
setup to my hamshack computer running MixW in 300 baud Packet mode and it
would perform just fine.

Then one day I was browsing the various menus in MixW and realized that it
was capable of emulating a KISS TNC if you could give it a second COM port
to use in addition to the one used for the soundcard interface. - I hooked
up a null-modem and cable to that port, and had a virtual KISS TNC. - I
hooked it up to my BBS computer's COM port where the HF TNC was supposed to
go, and it worked perfectly. The BBS now had a good TNC for HF and
immediately started transferring messages with other stations in the ARRL
SkipNet.

"Hey that's great!" I thought. I figured that it would do as a temporary fix
until I could get my TNC straightened out. - I would run the BBS software on
the old DOS PC, and have MixW on the "Winders" computer, emulating an HF
Packet TNC. ( The BBS computer also has a TNC hooked up for VHF, but that
works fine and so does not get more mention than this. )

It turned out that I was very wrong about that, and I had my nose rubbed
into it within minutes of getting the new setup going... I looked up at the
MixW display, saw that I was slightly off-frequency, clicked the mouse and
set my station exactly upon the one it was communicating with in a lot less
time that it takes to describe the action.

Anybody who has ever tuned in an HF Packet signal 'the hard way' without a
waterfall display knows how radical an improvement this is... Instead of
endlessly twisting the dial and pursing my lips in the hope that I would
accidently end up on frequency with the other HF Packet station and settling
for just about any level of communication at all, now I could just point 'n
click for instant accuracy and assurance in tuning. After using a waterfall
display to tune HF Packet, anything else is comparable to fumbling around in
the dark.

I was already spoiled... It took less than an hour.

It was ( and is ) great to be able to see and identify nearby and
interfering signals instead of just wondering why the link was suddenly
slow. Now I can sit back and watch PACTOR III stations come in right on top
of an ongoing Packet net just about any evening. - It literally happens
every day, something I had not been aware of before.

Those PACTOR III lids have got to go. - They are not fit company for thier
fellow hams onair, where it matters the most.

Then I read about a new release of the Q15x25 mode dll package for MixW, and
how the new modem was scalable... That is, if you set the modem for 1200
baud instead of the default 2500 baud, the modem would scale the signal down
to half of the previous bandwidth.

MixW considers Q15x25 to be a "Packet modem" even though it really uses PSK
tones instead of Packet. At any rate, the end result is that switching my
BBS from HF Packet to Q15x25 mode now just takes - a mouse click.

That was it! I put the cover back on the old HF TNC and tossed it into the
junk box.

If you are a Packet BBS SYSOP on HF or are thinking about becoming one, do
yourself a favor and check this out. - You'll be very glad you did. Obsolete
Win98 machines work fine for this application, and in many places can be had
for much less than the price of a new HF-capable TNC.

Once you try it, you'll never go back.

Charles Brabham, N5PVL

Director: USPacket http://www.uspacket.org
Admin: HamBlog.Com http://www.hamblog.com
Webmaster: HamPoll.Com http://www.hampoll.com

nice tip I will remmember it as my fanily finish cycling out those same
pcs and even when these pcs hit the end of their service life


Charles Brabham wrote:
This year I've had a hard time keeping a TNC on my HF Packet BBS... First a
lightning strike took out the entire station and once I had rebuilt or
replaced all that, the TNC I got for HF didn't work very well.

I never did track down what the problem was with that TNC, but I could tell
that the TNC was the problem because I could hook up the same radio/antenna
setup to my hamshack computer running MixW in 300 baud Packet mode and it
would perform just fine.

Then one day I was browsing the various menus in MixW and realized that it
was capable of emulating a KISS TNC if you could give it a second COM port
to use in addition to the one used for the soundcard interface. - I hooked
up a null-modem and cable to that port, and had a virtual KISS TNC. - I
hooked it up to my BBS computer's COM port where the HF TNC was supposed to
go, and it worked perfectly. The BBS now had a good TNC for HF and
immediately started transferring messages with other stations in the ARRL
SkipNet.

"Hey that's great!" I thought. I figured that it would do as a temporary fix
until I could get my TNC straightened out. - I would run the BBS software on
the old DOS PC, and have MixW on the "Winders" computer, emulating an HF
Packet TNC. ( The BBS computer also has a TNC hooked up for VHF, but that
works fine and so does not get more mention than this. )

It turned out that I was very wrong about that, and I had my nose rubbed
into it within minutes of getting the new setup going... I looked up at the
MixW display, saw that I was slightly off-frequency, clicked the mouse and
set my station exactly upon the one it was communicating with in a lot less
time that it takes to describe the action.

Anybody who has ever tuned in an HF Packet signal 'the hard way' without a
waterfall display knows how radical an improvement this is... Instead of
endlessly twisting the dial and pursing my lips in the hope that I would
accidently end up on frequency with the other HF Packet station and settling
for just about any level of communication at all, now I could just point 'n
click for instant accuracy and assurance in tuning. After using a waterfall
display to tune HF Packet, anything else is comparable to fumbling around in
the dark.

I was already spoiled... It took less than an hour.

It was ( and is ) great to be able to see and identify nearby and
interfering signals instead of just wondering why the link was suddenly
slow. Now I can sit back and watch PACTOR III stations come in right on top
of an ongoing Packet net just about any evening. - It literally happens
every day, something I had not been aware of before.

Those PACTOR III lids have got to go. - They are not fit company for thier
fellow hams onair, where it matters the most.

Then I read about a new release of the Q15x25 mode dll package for MixW, and
how the new modem was scalable... That is, if you set the modem for 1200
baud instead of the default 2500 baud, the modem would scale the signal down
to half of the previous bandwidth.

MixW considers Q15x25 to be a "Packet modem" even though it really uses PSK
tones instead of Packet. At any rate, the end result is that switching my
BBS from HF Packet to Q15x25 mode now just takes - a mouse click.

That was it! I put the cover back on the old HF TNC and tossed it into the
junk box.

If you are a Packet BBS SYSOP on HF or are thinking about becoming one, do
yourself a favor and check this out. - You'll be very glad you did. Obsolete
Win98 machines work fine for this application, and in many places can be had
for much less than the price of a new HF-capable TNC.

Once you try it, you'll never go back.

Charles Brabham, N5PVL

Director: USPacket http://www.uspacket.org
Admin: HamBlog.Com http://www.hamblog.com
Webmaster: HamPoll.Com http://www.hampoll.com

Charles Brabham wrote:

If you are a Packet BBS SYSOP on HF or are thinking about becoming one, do
yourself a favor and check this out. - You'll be very glad you did. Obsolete
Win98 machines work fine for this application, and in many places can be had
for much less than the price of a new HF-capable TNC.

I've found that disgustingly old notebooks are amazingly useful for things like
this. I had an old 100MHz Pentium notebook running PSK31 for the longest time;
it worked fine and wasn't useful for much else.

When you consider that most TNCs have a 4MHz Z-80 inside, it's not that
hard to imagine a 100 or 200MHz Pentium can do DSP + CPU duty...

Notebooks are especially appealing since they're entirely self-contained
and usually still have a working battery to tide you over short commercial
power failures. Ironically, a 5-year old notebook is chopped-liver to
pretty everyone but us.

Cheers!
Dana K6JQ

P.S. How many of y'all have AMD64-based notebooks? ;-)

"Dana H. Myers" wrote in message
...

I've found that disgustingly old notebooks are amazingly useful for things
like
this.

Notebooks have a reputation for producing less RF noise than desktop
systems, too.

Charles, N5PVL