The reason that Clover died out is that HAL decided to keep it proprietary. At least the early SCS Pactor mode was implemented with varying degrees of success on hardware from different vendors, e.g., Kantronics and AEA. Even HAL tried to implement it on their P-38 card but it never worked properly for me and eventually I returned the P-38 to HAL with a 20% restocking loss for me. Needless to say, HAL is no longer on my approved vendor list. When you have an inferior product and keep trying to redue the software and eventually are not able to have a quality product for the customer who is patiently giving you time to fix the problem and then won't honor the warranty of the product ... you deserve to lose market share.
Clover II was an OK mode, but could not work with weak signals under difficult conditions. I used to work the inventor of Clover (both I and II), Ray Petit, and we usually had very difficult times without much throughput. Just not that impressive a mode for difficult conditions. The Winlink system, which was a world wide HF forwarding/amateur radio mail system, used to use both Pactor and Clover II, but eventually dropped Clover II as the newer Pactor modes came along. I have read some communications that indicated that there may have been some kind of software glitch that made the Clover II mode even worse than it really was, but either way, when they dropped Clover modes, that had to hurt sales of HAL Clover products for the amateur market. They have a commercial market with Clover 2000, but the high cost insured that these modes were not going to be common on the amateur bands. Clover II had one nice feature in that it would simulate a duplex connection, albeit a slow one. But it had a lot of overhead to transmit before any actual data throughput could be sent. I did like the sound of the signal better than Pactor:) 73, Rick, KV9U jhaynesatalumni wrote: >--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Jose Amador <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >>Maybe only one modulation scheme (Layer One stuff) is >>not good enough for all situations, and different >>bands or propagation conditions may require different >>solutions. SCS boxes do it with different levels of >>PSK (BPSK, QPSK, 8PSK) and the number of carriers, >>from 2 to 16, and it does work. Even when you do not >>make a carbon copy, those ideas DO WORK. >> >> > >Which also reminds one of Clover. Interest in Clover seems to have >almost died out on the ham bands, given that it requires a fairly >expensive proprietary modem and there doesn't seem to be any ongoing >work to improve the software. I know some of the last times I used >Clover it would seem to get stuck trying to transmit a long block and >it would never get through, and the software didn't seem smart enough >to drop back and send shorter blocks. > > > > > > >Need a Digital mode QSO? Connect to Telnet://cluster.dynalias.org > >Other areas of interest: > >The MixW Reflector : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/themixwgroup/ >DigiPol: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Digipol (band plan policy discussion) > > >Yahoo! Groups Links > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Need a Digital mode QSO? Connect to Telnet://cluster.dynalias.org Other areas of interest: The MixW Reflector : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/themixwgroup/ DigiPol: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Digipol (band plan policy discussion) Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
