Hi Dana, My CPU is a homebrew, and a tad faster - MSI motherboard, P4 at 2.66 GHz (a little seasoned, but good), 512MB RAM, D44 for the SDR-1000, on-board AC-97 for digital stuff (someday), ATI Radeon 9600SE, some built-in and add-on USB & Firewire ports, and Windoze XP. Works great!
Can't speak for the Firebox, but the D44 is a fantastic audio card for radio use. Tim Ellison made some comments about the D44 having more noise on the low-freq end. I believe that SM5BSZ has some simple hardware mods (mostly cap and grounding changes) on his Linrad website showing how to significantly improve the D44's noise levels. When I get brave, I'll make the mods on my D44. Currently, I have the SDR-1000 connected to a DEMI 144-28HP high-power 2m transverter, running abt 38W out, driving a Lunar-Link LA-22 as needed for full legal limit. Nice! Point&Zap 2m QRO :-) I am also patiently waiting for the UCB project to spring back to life, for I also have a strong desire to build a 50 thru 1296 (or higher) contest setup based on a SDR-1000 IF. No use in buying more transverters if the control hardware isn't available - nor do I want to reinvent my own unique flavor of UCB. While not a Power SDR developer myself, I can speak with modest authority when it comes to GPIB control because I've been doing that sort of thing continuously for work since 1986. Adding GPIB (HP-IB) control capability to any piece of software requires: (1) Choosing one (or two) decent GPIB card(s) that are readily available at a reasonable price (about $500 new for a decent PCI card from National Instruments, Agilent, and a few others, much less if you can find a working one used), (2) Converting everyone to the same "GPIB faith" (yes, there ARE holy wars in the GPIB universe). (3) The card manufacturer's specific control library with support for your chosen development environment (NI-488.2, Agilent SICL, etc. - none of which are the least bit compatible with each other at the function call level), (4) A development environment that supports using those libraries - don't know if MS C# does, but I suspect that it might, (5) Some time writing GPIB code to convert the instrument manufacturer's examples to your language & purposes. The same goes if you decide to use a PC-based digital I/O or relay card and software to mimic the UCB. I know that I could gin up such a beast given sufficient spare time, and that I could probably make it look just like a UCB from a functional perspective, but then it would be unique to my needs, wouldn't use the existing UCB code, and it could upset folks from other DIO "faiths". But...barring the development of fixed standards for pseudo-UCB's...the SDR-1000 code is open-source, and that means that you can pretty much do whatever you need to do for your own setup, and that you should offer it up to the community so some other like-minded ham can use it as a baseline for his/her own setup. 73, Dan KB5MY/6 DM13nc -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of N1OFZ Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2006 5:45 PM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] Potential purchaser questions Hi all, I'm interested in purchasing a SDR-1000 and I've been reading the list archives. I am left with a few questions: Will my hardware be good enough? I have a Dell Latitude D800 (1.4GHZ, 512MB RAM). It has built in Firewire, Serial and Parallel ports. My other machine is a MacBook Pro (1.83GHz Intel Core Duo, 512MB RAM) that triple boots OSX, XP Pro and soon Ubuntu( currently SuSE). It has Firewire but I would need to add a usb parallel port. I can upgrade the RAM in either of these if necessary. Is the FireBox a good solution? It appears there have been issues with it in the past and seems to be a subject of discussion often. I don't want to dump $300 into a sub-standard solution. I can get a Dell 2.53 GHz white box for about the same amount. I could then sell my D800 and purchase a Delta 44 and other accessories. Is the ucb going to actually be available at some point? This is the real deal breaker as the rig will be solely used for VHF+ contesting. I currently have DEMI transverters for 50 through 1296 and I'm looking at adding more bands. I'm hesitant to buy the SDR-1000 before actually having the ucb (or other similar solution) in my hands. I currently use a HP 59307A coax switch. It has two single-pole 4-throw switches controlled from front-panel pushbuttons or remotely from an HP-IB interface. Does anyone have any idea how hard it would be to add HP-IB support to the software? This may be a good alternative solution and has lots of possibilities. Thanks for you time and I look forward to your comments, Dana N1OFZ _______________________________________________ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archive Link: http://mail.flex-radio.biz/pipermail/flexradio_flex-radio.biz/ FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com
