> On 1/4/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [snip] > > There is no reason why you could not have the Linux box interfaced to > a physical front panel so everything outside the box looks like a > conventional radio. Booting from Flash is not problem for Linux so > you could do without the mechanical hard drive. There would be no > need to network the radio unless you wanted to ( some do ). > > The one problem with this approach is it is power hungry in portable > battery powered uses. This is a place where I would expect Lyle's > approach would shine (with a QSD/PLL LO based radio... high speed ADCs > are still very power hungry). > > Phil N8VB >
Hmmm. My vision of this thing was always minimal -- basically, the thing turned the incoming radio signal into bits, and no more, and everything that mattered happened outboard. Doing it that way presumably could be done with a lower component count and a lower power budget. With or without Linux -- I don't care about that, though it's nice to know it can boot fast from flash. I don't care about a front panel, either, though I suppose it could be done. Actually, I probably don't want it, because I'm likely to have a laptop along anyway (and all _its_ battery problems), so multiplying power needs by having a full base-station level of power consumption works against the things I choose not to do with my SDR of today. The thing I most want to see out of a new SDR is not the Second System Effect (where the second project is way bigger than the first and, by the way, often overreaches), but something that keeps the _hardware_ simple and therefore flexible, and yet makes it all much more portable, less wire-ridden and overall more robust and transportable/portable. That is, USB in/out of the AD/DA streams and otherwise the same inputs and outputs all the other rigs have with as good as or better robustness than they have. The software complexity, in my view, belongs upstream. We just need to define some sort of bytes in / bytes out that we can be sure Windows, in particular, won't ever mess with and which is easily understood by those who wish to deal with them. What's being described here is starting to look like a base station only radio. For my interests, at least, that's not progress. If that's what it is, I'll just keep what I have now. I don't plan on a Vista upgrade soon anyhow -- I'm always a trailing adopter. Moreover, as the response to the "1 watt discontinue" shows, I'm not the only one thinking along more minimal lines unless it is all VHFers doing the complaining. Larry WO0Z _______________________________________________ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archive Link: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ FlexRadio Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/
