QRZ! Ham Radio 5/QRZ Ham Radio Callsign Database - Volume 5.iso/digests/tcp/940145.txt

Internet Message Format | 1994-11-13 | 12.7 KB

Date: Mon, 11 Jul 94 04:30:03 PDT
From: Advanced Amateur Radio Networking Group <[e-mail]>
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Subject: TCP-Group Digest V94 #145
To: tcp-group-digest


TCP-Group Digest            Mon, 11 Jul 94       Volume 94 : Issue  145

Today's Topics:
                        9600 baud packet users
                        AX.25 drivers for ODI
                         AX.25 Packet Driver
                                 DOS
                      Dreams in Black and White
                     JNOS 1.10d and BC++ for OS/2
                         new 9600 baud radios
                           NOS and Windows
                     WWW Interface for the KA9Q??

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We trust that readers are intelligent enough to realize that all text
herein consists of personal comments and does not represent the official
policies or positions of any party.  Your mileage may vary.  So there.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 10 Jul 1994 07:24:31 -0600 (MDT)
From: Klarsen <[e-mail]>
Subject: 9600 baud packet users
To: TCP digest <[e-mail]>

     While the movers and doers try and figure out the new
NETWORK, some of us need to work the future problem of getting the
average ham onto 9600 baud packet. To do this smart we say that a
ham must have the following things before getting on packet radio:

     1. A PC that runs dos 3.3 or higher, and has at least 1 free
slot for a PC card.

     2. An editor on the PC that allows writing and modifying
ascii control files. Edline is NOT a good editor. Neither is vi. I
use and recommend the VDE editor available wherever shareware
files are sold. The VDE editor is free for personal use.

     3. A radio on the band that the 9600 baud node operates on,
usually 2 meters, that has "true FM" modulation of the
transmitter. A list of such radios will be made available when the
information is available.

     4. Either a 9600 baud modem for his/her existing tnc, or
purchase a 9600 baud tnc on a card, that plugs into the computer
you have. This card does not exist now, but will in the near
future.

     The cost for getting on packet radio at 9600 baud  will not
be much more than getting on 1200 baud packet radio 5 years ago.
Now the required computer is cheap and the existing radio may well
work with the 9600 baud system.

     I strongly suggest that hams having a pc now and on packet
radio get the NOS software and install and use it. The latest from
the JNOS collection is jnos110d which I'm running in a very small
version that meets my needs. There needs to be a kit made that
includes a particular version of NOS, the VDE editor and some of
the best documentation on how to install and use that version of
nos. The British have done this with what they called visual-nos
or like that.

     We need to use this later version of nos because it has some
nice additions to the original NET. But the individual user does
not need the bbs features. He will use smtp and ftp to communicate
with his buddies and learn how all that works.

     So the future of ham packet radio will be to go from the slow
1200 to the 8 times faster 9600 baud world. Anyone with a good
idea along these lines please put it on the network, packet,
internet or fidonet so we can all learn.

73 de karl [e-mail]

    (this is making it's way across the country on the bbs network.
Should be in the east coast now, I hope)

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 11 Jul 1994 09:26:00 +0200 (BST)
From: [e-mail] (Alan Cox)
Subject: AX.25 drivers for ODI
To: [e-mail] (Bill Horne)

> please send me a note.  Also, if you have the programmer's information on
> how to code an ODI-compliant driver in C, please send that as well.

The spec is available from Novell as is a developer kit for ODI drivers. I
believe it is about $3000 or so. You may want to look at other alternatives
like using PDIPX instead of ODI as your bottom layer.

Alan

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 10 Jul 1994 08:18:56 -0500 (CDT)
From: [e-mail] (Steve Sampson)
Subject: AX.25 Packet Driver
To: [e-mail]

Just a note to thank Gary Grebus for the well done packet driver for AX.25!
I plugged it in today and experimented with it using SuperTCP (Frontier
Technologies).  It works as advertised.  Now I only wish I had a better RF
path. . .

The problems I had getting started was:

    Don't try to use the interrupt that is shown in his axample with
SuperTCP (0x7E) as it likes 0x6b.  What I did was add the driver to the
installation floppy by deleting the SLIP8250 driver and modifying the
packet.inf file (I commented out the check= parameter as the calculation of
this number is unknown by me).  This makes it easier to just click on packet
driver on installation, and it will offer ethrax25 as an option.  I found at
this point it liked to use 0x6b.  I also found it liked to turn on hardware
flow and SLIP, so after installation I modify the autoexec.bat to delete the
SLIP part, but it seems to work OK using hardware flow (-h).  You have to go
through the servers and make sure those things that are specified in seconds
are adjusted for your network.

Notes:

    I notice that the MTU of the driver is set for 1514 (GIANT).  I wonder
if this should probably be 236 (256 - 20)?  Better would be an ax25conf.exe
parameter probably, as this could be increased on higher speeds.

It looks like a lot of hard work by Gary, thanks again,
Steve, N5OWK

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 10 Jul 1994 06:28:10 -0600 (MDT)
From: Klarsen <[e-mail]>
Subject: DOS
To: Bruce Perens <[e-mail]>

On Sat, 9 Jul 1994, Bruce Perens wrote:

> DRSI already makes a 9600/1200 card. I think they list it for $300.
> There's no radio included, so add $100 for a TEKK (cheaper than an HT)
> and something for cables, antenna, feedline, power supply, etc.

    Yes Bruce the TEKK radio seems to be a good choice for the home
station with no competing 440 mhz radios. I would hope DRSI could make a
single 9600 baud card for a hundred bucks less. It wouls sell pretty good
I expect to users wishing higher speeds to mine and others bbs...hi

>
> There's also the Gracilis card/radio/software package, which is about
> the same as the above but works out of the box and costs $100 more.

    I wonder what the realities are that make the Gracilis package so
expensive? But since it's a complete system it might well be about as
cheap as it can get!  But $400.00 is hard to talk the wife into...


> What you get is something that's OK for connecting to a BBS, and
> doesn't have much of a user interface. The user interface is going
> to be a _BIG_ problem for the average ham. Maybe Windows would be
> better for this reason.

    You are right Bruce. This morning I got the first message in
response to a packet bulletin I sent out yesterday. It is from a ham in
Pheonix and in poor english he cussed me out and said he was using a
Color Computer and a used $90.00 tnc. He was NEVER going to get on 9600
baud and NEVER have a PC. So as hams we have people like this ham who is
hard pressed to get his poor equipment to work right and cannot afford?
more? and the guys here on internet who seem to be light-years ahead.

    I will enter the bulletin on the digest so everyone here can see
it.

>
>     Bruce Perens AB6YM
>
    Karl Larsen K5DI

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 11 Jul 1994 09:24:18 +0200 (BST)
From: [e-mail] (Alan Cox)
Subject: Dreams in Black and White
To: [e-mail]

> the transliteration ("port" is to crude a word - ) of amateur radio enabled
> IP services and applications to any OS environment ought to be carried out
> with an eye toward using common source code and an a *completely uniform*
> user command set. Hardware level stuff should be left to individual OS

I'm not convinced about a single user interface, some people like text,
some menus. Portability I don't see as a problem. If there is a defined
standard (or pseudo standard) - eg BSD sockets, as used in most systems now
including I believe the OS/2 kit, then all we do is define the behaviour
of AF_AX25 family sockets. On a textual level OS/2 and Unix combined portability
is easy. Especially with gcc on both.

> Then if Walt wants to write a bunch of DSOM enabled Workplace Shell IP Apps
> and Steve wants to do the same in X-windows (do I hear the sound of distant
> apoplexic seizures Alan?) they can do it and not worry about the binary
> unlayment or disturbing the serenity of the "text-mode-forever" UNIX
> fanatics.

Yep.. There is already one Linux amateur radio application using X windows
and the kernel AX.25, so X is fine for those whole like it. OS/2 graphical
apps seem equally as suited.

> dedicating a whole machine to packet radio. Use of freeBSD or LINUX would
> prevent them from using DOS "legacy applications" while they run their IP
> stuff in the background. OS/2 easily allows one to do this (I am as I
> write!) without major retraining or getting a CS / programming background.

Actually Linux has a DOS emulator that's good enough to play Wolfenstein but
not run Windows 8). The basic comment is right though for windoze users OS/2
is a sensible path.

> LINUX may indeed be the best option for 80X86 based gateway/router
> platforms! What about old 68K or MIPS or even new PPC boxes? Could we keep
> the code portable? Common featured? Avoid rampant "feeping creaturism" as

Well AmigaNOS has been clean quite portable code for a long time. And doesn't
have the 640K limit and worked far better than the DOS variants at many jobs.
I guess that proves its quite doable even with NOS code once you get away
from DOS.

Alan

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 10 Jul 1994 15:31:33 -0300 (EST)
From: Ma Auxiliadora Minahim <[e-mail]>
Subject: JNOS 1.10d and BC++ for OS/2
To: [e-mail]

Hi...
Can I compile the JNOS 1.10d in the Borland C++ v1.5 for OS/2 ??
I've tried but I need some help.

Thx
PU6WDM

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 10 Jul 1994 11:57:44 -0700
From: "Robert A. Buaas" <[e-mail]>
Subject: new 9600 baud radios
To: [e-mail]

When evaluating the new 2M 9600 radios, check the specs (if you can't check
the actual performance) to see what the keyup and keydown (rcvr recovery) times
are. The usual single-VCO cheap transceivers are not optimized to move the
VCO quickly, nor is the receiver detector stable quickly after transmitting.
Having to run the TNC at TXD 30 means that you are using 300 milliseconds of
channel time  (that's nearly 3000 bits!) to get started. Consider the impact
this has on the channel access algorithms. Similiarly, consider what percentage
of the channel time is lost to getting the receiver active again.

In short, the improvement in channel throughput is likely not to be that which
is casually expected. Anyone having some verified number would do us all a
service by publishing them in this forum.

-bob K6KGS

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 10 Jul 1994 06:45:23 -0600 (MDT)
From: Klarsen <[e-mail]>
Subject: NOS and Windows
To: TCP digest <[e-mail]>

    Every nos I have ever run will run in a dos window under windows
ver 3.1 and it is simple to do. First load nos and write a batch file to
bring it up. Then go to the windows Pif Editor and write a .pif file to
call the batch file. Make it a windowed window and give nos plenty of
ram! I used memaker in dos 6.2 and my windows have 620kbyte max and nos
is happy....

    Now make an icon to call nos and your set. I did have a problem
with the new versions of nos with a color band across the top of the
screen. Windows sent me several warning messages saying the color
settings for nos were not correct. I never did find the correct settings
and solved the problem by compiling a new version w/o color.

    karl k5di

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 11 Jul 1994 09:32:27 +0200 (BST)
From: [e-mail] (Alan Cox)
Subject: WWW Interface for the KA9Q??
To: [e-mail]

> Hi Folks!! Why not to put a WWW interface for the Ka9q?? It is reliable, it
> is standard , and it is nice :). Why not??

a) It is large
b) Its not as simple as it looks once you get into WAIS, image handling, and
other services.
c) If you want to do that you can already use a Unix system and Wampes to
do it, or Linux and the kernel AX.25 code. I know I run an amateur radio
Web server.

Alan

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End of TCP-Group Digest V94 #145
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