Thomas Laus wrote:

I am looking for the specifications of the CAT protocol mainly for Yaesu
and Kenwood TRXs. I have the basic commands in the user's manual but I
am looking for full specs, including memories management, etc. Any
pointers or hints would be highly appreciated. TNX in advance.

Yes - the manual provides the basics and explains how to construct the
packets etc. What is missing though are the methods of handling the
memory banks. It even doesn't say how to read/write memory locations (I
may suspect that user memories are to be accessed by reading/writing
specific hardware memory addresses). And I have read somewhere that
there is a full specifications document, which covers these topics plus
there is even more - some undocumented features, which can be accessed
this way. I am looking for at least the specs that would allow one to
deal with user memories. FT-897 is a good choice - I have to deal with
FT-857, which is supposed to be fully compatible, but also with VX-7R,
which almost certainly is not.

Have you tried looking in the files for the Hamlib project on
Sourceforge?

http://hamlib.sourceforge.net/

They keep a repository of various software interfaces to a lot of
radios. I have used the Kenwood library to get some hints on how to
talk to my TS-950. You might be able to gain some insight into how your
Yaesu talks it's COMM port.

Now that might be a good hint! Thank you, I shall definitely look into
those. Still, I am wondering how do all those people who write the CAT
software gain their knowledge. I would expect the producers to
publish the full specs but so far no reply from "vertex"..