wrote in message ...

FWIW, I realized today that I DO have full manuals and have learned that,
even though the AT can be an after-market addition, the schematics show
the AT is controlled by the radio's processor and making it work without
the radio will be a real pain!

Actually, maybe not as much of a pain as if the thing had its own processor.
If the AT had a dedicated processor, there would certainly be some control
lines from the rig's processor. Reverse engineering what those control
lines did could be a real problem.

But if the AT is controlled by the rig's processor, then there are interface
lines to the things that need to be twiddled, and it should be fairly
obvious from the schematic what twiddles what. So the problem simply
becomes writing autotuner software, which isn't all that bad. All the grody
hardware work has been done for you! Ok, certainly not a trivial project,
but I'm not sure it rises to the level of "a real pain"

Of course, some folks have a different comfort level with a soldering iron
than with a keyboard, so I imagine there are some that might see it
differently.

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