Mike:
Do the Moto programs need a serial port or a parallel port?
I have three Gateway Handbook 40 Mhz 486DX computers. These
are fairly small monochrome display with a serial port.
Unfortunately the parallel port needs an adaptor to get to
a DB25 connector and the floppy drive also needs a cable
to run on the parallel port.
Would these be suitable for programming, assuming I can get
the program onto the harddrive? I have one of the parallel
port adaptors and one of the floppy cables for these computers.
Micheal Salem N5MS
Mike Morris WA6ILQ wrote:
> John:
> You may want to keep that 286 for yourself. A lot of the Moto software that
> is used to program the synthesized radios (like Maxtrac, MT-1000, Spectra,
> Saber, etc) will not run on anything faster than 100mhz. There are tricks to
> slow down older computers, but it's a lot less problematical to just keep an
> old 286, 386 or 486 alive. The "breakpoint" seems to be a 486-66 or 486-100
> and DOS 5. The problem is that the Moto software guys were hardware
> engineers and not programmers and used software timing loops to "throttle"
> the flow of the data in and out of the serial port. Fast machines "break" the
> serial port drivers.
>
> So if you have a working 286, 386 or 486 and if you think you ever might be
> needing to run Moto's "Radio Service Software" - RSS for short - keep that
> old clunker.
>
> Personally, I have a 286 desktop and a while back I set up a couple of
> IBM 700-series color Thinkpads (486-66) for a friend. I boosted the laptop
> internal hard drive from 200meg to 2 gig (the replacement drives cost $25
> each). The laptop plugs into a docking station with a CD-ROM drive and
> a large hard drive in it. I can back up the entire laptop hard drive by doing
> a simple XCOPY from the internal hard drive to the docking station hard
> drive.
>
> And I'd like a copy of that announcement program if you end up zipping it...
>
> Mike WA6ILQ
>
> At 07:44 AM 2/7/04 -0500, "John Clark" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
>>Don,
>>
>>I have a 286 computer that the TV station used for music going to
>>commercial out of the news. It runs in dos.
>>If you can't find something similar in your "dogpile" searches,
>>(learned something new myself, though I prefer 'google') let me know.
>>I'm sure the program is small enough to zip up and FTP if not e-mail.
>>I will be glad to do it for you, if for no other reason than you've given
>>me a good idea of what to do with the old thing!
>>
>>Another option: We have a satellite fed "radio station in a box" on our
>>tower that uses a tiny walkman-style MP3 player that has all the IDs
>>and such on it. They ran wires to it to trigger from the computer. It
>>looks so out of place in the nice rack of broadcast gear, but it works!
>>
>>John R Clark
>>WCTV 6 Television Engineering
>>(850) 893-6666 EXT 205
>>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>
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