On Mon, 25 Sep 2006, Joel Kolstad wrote:

"ken scharf" wrote in message
...
The advantage of Linux is that the development tools are free

Not true. A fairer statement would probably be something like "there are
significantly more free development tools for Linux than there are for
Windows." On Windows, the "express" editions of the Microsoft compilers are
free, older Borland tools are free, GCC is free, etc. On Linux, there are
plenty of commercial development suite, which in many cases are well worth the
money.

I'm not that aware of how many (and how good) developement tools are there
for Linux but...see bellow...

and Linux
will run on any computer that runs windows.

Also not true. Especially with laptops, drivers for Linux are often
non-existent. In fact, where I start thinking, "hmm... I should do something
with Linux..." the *first* thing I have to consider is whether or not I have a
PC around that'll have its hardware fully supported.

My little story....

I have been told that there are laptops out there, with Windows
pre-installed, that will not even run DOS or Win3.1 any more.

Laptop support for anything other than what software the laptop was
designed for is a major problem.

I have had vastly more success intalling the earlier versions of Linux on
"any" PC laying around. Just like Windoze, Linux has also tightened up its
hardware compatibility requirements and particularly in the driver
category.

I've had, and installed, from Red Hat 4.2 to 5.2, 6.2, 7.3 (problems with
7.4, very buggy GUIs in 7.1,7.2), and mostly failure with one of the
Workstation (Taroon, version 3.0) versions (based on the 3.5 inch
boot disk with included CD-ROM driver portfolio was changed from a small
number of prior CD-ROM drivers to new RAIDs, etc, and the new drivers
don't recognize anything older than about 4-5 years, now). And, I was
profoundly disappointed. Also, that same Linux (Taroon) required 256 MB of
ram to run. It would boot with less (32 mb), but barely get the GUI up.
Anything beyond that would run into the swap partition and be slow as
hell. Actually both 6.2 and 7.3 (which installed sucessfully less often
than 6.2 or 5.2) are pretty good (eg. drag and drop file manager, gFTP,
automount-dismount drives, etc). StarOffice 5.1 & 5.2 installed well on
5.2 and 6.2. The problems with 7.3 and prior were the buggy web browsers
or they would crash on moderate to advanced websites.

I never set up the firewalls, IP chains, or whatever, and some months
after I was running it on the intenet, I got hacked (I actually witnessed
it as it was happening: hard drive started cranking like mad, and lots of
bytes were being downloaded (as could be seen on the download bytes/sec
rate meter and graph). By the time I could get to the phone line to
disconnect, the bugger downloaded a rootkit somewhere and every time I
booted it up, I could see a package of outgoing data (red bars) leave my
box (and without confirming green bars) to some unknown point on the
internet. At a later point, I nuked the HD and re-installed.

As an aside, I still run DOS & Win3.1 for a lot of internet aps. At one
time, www.securityspace.com ran free vulnerability tests with hack attacks
(I think www.grc.com does too) and could not hack my Win3.1 with Netscape
2.01 dialer (probably because it has no ports for anything but email, ng,
ftp, and http protocols), but it could hack my Linux and Win98SE boxes
(without ZoneAlarm). Most of the time I access my shell account with a DOS
terminal program (dialup terminal mode, not ppp). I think my home box is
pretty safe that way (not much is going to cross from Unix to DOS, and I
don't keep any vital info in files/folders on my shell directory.

Folks, all this stuff about Operating Systems is interesting, but it
doesn't apply that much to this "Homebrew Challenge" insofar as
the radio part of the radio station specified in the contest.

For only $50 in New Part cost, what does everyone think about
for the actual RADIO hardware?

Just curious...I have no interest in that contest...just a curiosity
of what might come up in the next year.

On 2006-09-28, wrote:

For only $50 in New Part cost, what does everyone think about
for the actual RADIO hardware?

Their goals of homebuildable and as cheap/functional as possible are in
conflict. A starter homebrew design should be more modular, rely less
on overloading of components for multiple purposes, include guidelines
for substituting any expensive or rare part with found alternatives. It
would not be concerned about requiring one of a part you can only readily
get in bags of 10 or 20.

The cheapest possible starter 40M CW/SSB radio would probably be a kit,
not built from a collection of overpriced Radio Shack components. It
probably does a lot of work in the digital domain, without regard to
ease of modification. It's built on an etched PCB mass produced in
such quantities that it's cheaper than bare copper board at the local
electronics store.

--
Ben Jackson AD7GD

http://www.ben.com/

Ben Jackson wrote:

The cheapest possible starter 40M CW/SSB radio would probably be a kit,
not built from a collection of overpriced Radio Shack components. It
probably does a lot of work in the digital domain, without regard to
ease of modification. It's built on an etched PCB mass produced in
such quantities that it's cheaper than bare copper board at the local
electronics store.

I agree, but I also think many will rise to the challenge, even though
the prize is modest. Look for some very clever things--mostly done
with IQ phasing techniques. I personally plan to enter with something,
and suspect others on this list will as well. Also expect an even
better project to follow that builds on all the best from the
contest...I'm most interested to see what sort of frequency
synthesizers/VFOs come out of this. I'm personally hoping ARRL gets
enough entries that they can publish a book or something, and am hoping
this will inspire some wonderful new kits and other things for newbies.

My design will not use IQ, will have a DSP (probably one of the
Microchip 30F4013s in a DIP pkg), but I haven't found/invented a VFO
scheme I really like yet (yes, I know the contest allows you to be
rockbound, but I'm shooting a little higher). I'll try to set up a
brag page and post progress.

I appreciate the time given for this contest--even with very spare time
people should be able to do something. I suspect ARRL's lab will have
their hands full testing everything that comes in ( maybe they will
only test the finalists).

What fun!

73,
Glenn Dixon AC7ZN