[digitalradio] Adobe Reader incompatible with amateur radio computer?
I just completed a thorough format and reload of my PC, a Gateway Intel Core 2 Duo with 2G of RAM. Everything was working perfectly until I received a .pdf file from my local ARES organization. As soon as I loaded the current version of Adobe Reader the problems started. Adobe would not let me download Reader until I allowed an add-on to be installed to my Internet Explorer 8. I allowed the installation, but disabled it immediately after the download. Reader installed with no problem, but the first time I ran it, to disable the automatic update feature, I got the dreaded Blue Scrren of Death upon closing the program. A short time later the system rebooted with no warning, and this morning Outlook will no longer allow me to read my email. I seem to recall a couple of years ago that there was a problem with Reader when used with some digital ham software. Does anyone know if it is still an issue (if, in fact, it ever was!), or is this perhaps just a corrupt download? In any case, I am once again reformatting and reloading, and will NOT be adding Reader in the future! Tnx es 73 Dave KB3MOW
[digitalradio] SDR-Radio with DM780 20M Digital Band
One of the things that I wanted to accomplish with an SDR receiver, is the ability to keep an eye on the whole 14065 to 14115 frequency range. If I was down on 14074 monitoring ALE 400 traffic, I would miss Olivia signals that popped up in the 14109 area. I would also miss Hell signals at 14068. Now the SDR affords the opportunity to keep an eye all all at once. My venture in to SDR from a digital mode perspective has led to a discovery that, other than Multipsk, the current state of the art does not support direct monitoring of wider I/Q data. I'm also challenged in that my PC cannot cope with the Multipsk CPU demand when I try direct monitoring. So, at the moment I am visually monitoring signals with the SDR and using traditional software methods to decode the 3-4 kHz of audio that is fed from the SDR to applications like DM780 or Fldigi. At this screen shot http://www.obriensweb.com/sdrdm780.jpg you will see how it appears. I am simply using DM780 and SDR-Radio software together. When I need to transmit, I just use my TS2000 after dialing in the signal discovered by the SDR receiver. Simon HB9DRV will likely integrate these two applications later in 2010. I did catch a Russian on RTTY this morning that I would have otherwise missed while I was slumming it in PSK31-land.. Multisk does RS-ID over this entire 14065-14115 portion, and DM780 is likely going to include this ability in the future. If people use RS-ID often enough, it will be really cool to monitor 14065-14115 and get RS ID alerts. So, just over a week playing around with the SDR receiver... I see the potential... digital mode applications are not quite there yet. When they are there (as in Multipsk) my PC isn't. This $41.00 Ebay PC may eventually get retired for a slightly improved one with better CPU. OK, back to keeping an eye on 14065-14115. A-ha, an SV3 calling CQ RTTY, 14082. Andy K3UK
[digitalradio] Packet configurations?
I want to start up a packet system: What cables and software do I need to use my VX5 as a packet engine using Outpost software? I want to use my Gateway LT2022u XP netbook's soundcard and USB connections. No serial connections and no external TNC please. So far the best I've found is the: BUXCOMM RASCAL-II is the easiest Plug-N-Play sound card interface available today. Use the sound card software for the AFSK Digital mode you wish to operate. There are no serial or USB driver software to load or install, nor comports to select. One RASCAL-II to Transceiver cable is included. Supports All AFSK Data Voice Modes - The BUXCOMM RASCAL II supports ALL AFSK, Digital and Voice modes that are available for sound card interfaces. This includes ALL traditional modes such as AFSK operation of PSK31, CW, RTTY, Packet, MT-63 and SSTV. On-line reviews are less than positive but they are also several years old. Does the RASCAL-II work as advertised? Are there other configurations I should consider? Do I need AGWPE or some other software? Bert KG6HIZ
Re: [digitalradio] SDR-Radio with DM780 20M Digital Band
Andy, I plan on switching to SDR in the near future. My current PC is a dual CPU 2.2GHz Dell with 3 GHz RAM. Any idea what the minimum PC requirement is to run Multipsk with SDR? Could you also tell us what processor you're running now? Thanks, Tony -K2MO - Original Message - From: Andy obrien To: digitalradio Sent: Friday, January 29, 2010 9:11 AM Subject: [digitalradio] SDR-Radio with DM780 20M Digital Band One of the things that I wanted to accomplish with an SDR receiver, is the ability to keep an eye on the whole 14065 to 14115 frequency range. If I was down on 14074 monitoring ALE 400 traffic, I would miss Olivia signals that popped up in the 14109 area. I would also miss Hell signals at 14068. Now the SDR affords the opportunity to keep an eye all all at once. My venture in to SDR from a digital mode perspective has led to a discovery that, other than Multipsk, the current state of the art does not support direct monitoring of wider I/Q data. I'm also challenged in that my PC cannot cope with the Multipsk CPU demand when I try direct monitoring. So, at the moment I am visually monitoring signals with the SDR and using traditional software methods to decode the 3-4 kHz of audio that is fed from the SDR to applications like DM780 or Fldigi. At this screen shot http://www.obriensweb.com/sdrdm780.jpg you will see how it appears. I am simply using DM780 and SDR-Radio software together. When I need to transmit, I just use my TS2000 after dialing in the signal discovered by the SDR receiver. Simon HB9DRV will likely integrate these two applications later in 2010. I did catch a Russian on RTTY this morning that I would have otherwise missed while I was slumming it in PSK31-land.. Multisk does RS-ID over this entire 14065-14115 portion, and DM780 is likely going to include this ability in the future. If people use RS-ID often enough, it will be really cool to monitor 14065-14115 and get RS ID alerts. So, just over a week playing around with the SDR receiver... I see the potential... digital mode applications are not quite there yet. When they are there (as in Multipsk) my PC isn't. This $41.00 Ebay PC may eventually get retired for a slightly improved one with better CPU. OK, back to keeping an eye on 14065-14115. A-ha, an SV3 calling CQ RTTY, 14082. Andy K3UK
Re: [digitalradio] SDR-Radio with DM780 20M Digital Band
Tony, my shack PC sounds like yours. A Dell P4, 2.3 CPU , but only 1 gig of RAM. Perhaps we can compare current system resource utilization for regular Multipsk ? Regular Multipsk in PSK31 mode with a 4,3 Khz waterfall uses 25 % of CPU. With RS ID on , about the same 25-26% With Panoramic decode.. CPU increases to around 30%. Then Multipsk with Direct I/Q mode invoked , CPU increases to 60% Then RS ID in SDR /IQ direct invoked, Multipsk uses 90% of my CPU. The above is JUST Multipsk related, obviously other applications , like a web browser being open, add more demand. My daughter is away skiing this weekend, so I may borrow her Vista laptop and do a comparison. I do not know what is realistic for Multipsk with all its SDR receive capability and RS ID. I don;t really understand what actual performance increase one could expect if CPU was 3.0 Ghz rather than 2.3, Also not sure what performance improvement going to a dual core around the same clock speed would produce. On my shack PC, Multipsk seems close , I am guessing if I could eek out another 10% it would run just fine. I'm reluctant to put more RAM in to an old machine, but I do have a compatible 1 Gig memory chip that i could pilfer from another PC and see if 2 gigs of RAM ease demand on the CPU. I'm guessing it would not make much difference. I do have plenty of HD space. Hope you and the family are all OK, Andy. Andy On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 2:36 PM, Tony d...@optonline.net wrote: Andy, I plan on switching to SDR in the near future. My current PC is a dual CPU 2.2GHz Dell with 3 GHz RAM. Any idea what the minimum PC requirement is to run Multipsk with SDR? Could you also tell us what processor you're running now? Thanks, Tony -K2MO - Original Message - *From:* Andy obrien k3uka...@gmail.com *To:* digitalradio digitalradio@yahoogroups.com *Sent:* Friday, January 29, 2010 9:11 AM *Subject:* [digitalradio] SDR-Radio with DM780 20M Digital Band One of the things that I wanted to accomplish with an SDR receiver, is the ability to keep an eye on the whole 14065 to 14115 frequency range. If I was down on 14074 monitoring ALE 400 traffic, I would miss Olivia signals that popped up in the 14109 area. I would also miss Hell signals at 14068. Now the SDR affords the opportunity to keep an eye all all at once. My venture in to SDR from a digital mode perspective has led to a discovery that, other than Multipsk, the current state of the art does not support direct monitoring of wider I/Q data. I'm also challenged in that my PC cannot cope with the Multipsk CPU demand when I try direct monitoring. So, at the moment I am visually monitoring signals with the SDR and using traditional software methods to decode the 3-4 kHz of audio that is fed from the SDR to applications like DM780 or Fldigi. At this screen shot http://www.obriensweb.com/sdrdm780.jpg you will see how it appears. I am simply using DM780 and SDR-Radio software together. When I need to transmit, I just use my TS2000 after dialing in the signal discovered by the SDR receiver. Simon HB9DRV will likely integrate these two applications later in 2010. I did catch a Russian on RTTY this morning that I would have otherwise missed while I was slumming it in PSK31-land.. Multisk does RS-ID over this entire 14065-14115 portion, and DM780 is likely going to include this ability in the future. If people use RS-ID often enough, it will be really cool to monitor 14065-14115 and get RS ID alerts. So, just over a week playing around with the SDR receiver... I see the potential... digital mode applications are not quite there yet. When they are there (as in Multipsk) my PC isn't. This $41.00 Ebay PC may eventually get retired for a slightly improved one with better CPU. OK, back to keeping an eye on 14065-14115. A-ha, an SV3 calling CQ RTTY, 14082. Andy K3UK
[digitalradio] Adobe Reader incompatible with amateur radio computer?
n0hnj writes: [problems with the latest Adobe Reader and MSIE on a reinstall of MS Windows.] Adobe has a long history of buffer overrun bugs leading to exploits. There are third-party readers for PDF documents that are safer. Since I don't run Windows, the readers I use (Xpdf and Okular) wouldn't work for you, but a web search should find some safer programs for viewing PDFs under MSWin. You should consider switching to Firefox as a safer alternative to the historically buggy and exploit-prone MS Internet Explorer. (I DO strongly recommend installing the NoScript add-on to Firefox, though.) I also suggest downloading PDFs to your local disk and opening them with a separate program, rather than letting your browser try to display them for you. I would expect that to be accomplished by right-clicking on the link and selecting a save as item from a menu, but I don't know whether that applies to MSIE. Sometimes convenience and safety are conflicting values. 73 DE KW6H (ex-AE6VW), Chris Jewell
Re: [digitalradio] SDR-Radio with DM780 20M Digital Band
Hello Tony, I have here two PC XP at about 2.4 GHz (single core): I have compare these two XP computers on the same file to decode (in 110A): * the first one (the oldest) which is an AMD Atlon 2500+ 1.09 GHz 768 Ko RAM takes 75 seconds to decode it, * the second one which is an AMD Atlon 2400+ 2 GHz 736 Ko RAM takes 20 seconds to decode it. On the most modern (about 3 years old) with SdR and RS ID detection on 44 KHz, the CPU load is about 35 to 40 %, but on the old one it is 100 % (the program does not work in fact). So normally with a modern PC it is OK. With an old PC, it can be problematic. Note: with my Vista laptop (dual core), the CPU load is about 25 % in the same conditions. 73 Patrick - Original Message - From: Tony To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, January 29, 2010 8:36 PM Subject: Re: [digitalradio] SDR-Radio with DM780 20M Digital Band Andy, I plan on switching to SDR in the near future. My current PC is a dual CPU 2.2GHz Dell with 3 GHz RAM. Any idea what the minimum PC requirement is to run Multipsk with SDR? Could you also tell us what processor you're running now? Thanks, Tony -K2MO - Original Message - From: Andy obrien To: digitalradio Sent: Friday, January 29, 2010 9:11 AM Subject: [digitalradio] SDR-Radio with DM780 20M Digital Band One of the things that I wanted to accomplish with an SDR receiver, is the ability to keep an eye on the whole 14065 to 14115 frequency range. If I was down on 14074 monitoring ALE 400 traffic, I would miss Olivia signals that popped up in the 14109 area. I would also miss Hell signals at 14068. Now the SDR affords the opportunity to keep an eye all all at once. My venture in to SDR from a digital mode perspective has led to a discovery that, other than Multipsk, the current state of the art does not support direct monitoring of wider I/Q data. I'm also challenged in that my PC cannot cope with the Multipsk CPU demand when I try direct monitoring. So, at the moment I am visually monitoring signals with the SDR and using traditional software methods to decode the 3-4 kHz of audio that is fed from the SDR to applications like DM780 or Fldigi. At this screen shot http://www.obriensweb.com/sdrdm780.jpg you will see how it appears. I am simply using DM780 and SDR-Radio software together. When I need to transmit, I just use my TS2000 after dialing in the signal discovered by the SDR receiver. Simon HB9DRV will likely integrate these two applications later in 2010. I did catch a Russian on RTTY this morning that I would have otherwise missed while I was slumming it in PSK31-land.. Multisk does RS-ID over this entire 14065-14115 portion, and DM780 is likely going to include this ability in the future. If people use RS-ID often enough, it will be really cool to monitor 14065-14115 and get RS ID alerts. So, just over a week playing around with the SDR receiver... I see the potential... digital mode applications are not quite there yet. When they are there (as in Multipsk) my PC isn't. This $41.00 Ebay PC may eventually get retired for a slightly improved one with better CPU. OK, back to keeping an eye on 14065-14115. A-ha, an SV3 calling CQ RTTY, 14082. Andy K3UK
[digitalradio] Understanding Virtual Audio Cable ?
I understand sound cards. For digital modes, we need to know how to set up audio coming in to the soud card and out of the sound card. When there is more than one sound card in the PC, we need to know how to set up digital mode applications for the desired sound card. All relatively easy (except the odd nomenclature in Windows Sound Mixer). A couple of years ago , I was having coffee with a neighbour ham who had a new Flex 100 and he was explaining that digital mode with that radio was a challenge (back then) and that they had to use Virtual Audio Cable. I remember reading something about it, briefly, and then forgetting about it. There is something about the term virtual audio cab;le that causes my mind to melt, I have a hard time grasping what it does. Probably the word cable that is throwing my brain off. The other day, I downloaded Virtual Audio Cable. I took a quick look , got awfully confused, and closed the application. I figure that this weekend, I will open it again and finally try to figure it out. Would I be far off if I guess that VAC essentially creates an audio IN and OUT path similar to having a second sound card? I am not sure that I have any ham radio applications that require VAC, but i figure I better finally learn what it can do. Andy K3UK
[digitalradio] Re: Understanding Virtual Audio Cable ?
Here's an example of what you can (and I did) do with VAC: I remoted my station audio from the PC that is connected to my Signalink to my laptop that I carry around the house using IPSound. IPSound wants to attach to a sound card for input and output, just like DM780 (or Fldigi, etc.). Indeed, I could get it to work by attaching both IPSound and DM780 to my sound card. However I did not want Windows sounds going out on the radio and I wanted to be able to independently control the audio from the radio separately from Windows sounds. Enter VAC. I created two virtual audio cables in VAC. In IPSound I assigned cable 1 to the radio output. In DM780 I did the same. Similar assignments were made for cable 2 for DM780 output via IPSound. Voila, it worked! Think of the virtual cables as being like patch points in a patch bay. The other cool thing is I used the Audio Repeater application that comes with VAC to monitor cable 1. This allowed me to independently assign a volume to the radio audio separately from the Windows sounds. If you need to keep audio connections between different audio applications (like IPSound and DM780, or DM780 and PowerSDR) separate from actual hardware, VAC works great. --- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Andy obrien k3uka...@... wrote: I understand sound cards. For digital modes, we need to know how to set up audio coming in to the soud card and out of the sound card. When there is more than one sound card in the PC, we need to know how to set up digital mode applications for the desired sound card. All relatively easy (except the odd nomenclature in Windows Sound Mixer). A couple of years ago , I was having coffee with a neighbour ham who had a new Flex 100 and he was explaining that digital mode with that radio was a challenge (back then) and that they had to use Virtual Audio Cable. I remember reading something about it, briefly, and then forgetting about it. There is something about the term virtual audio cab;le that causes my mind to melt, I have a hard time grasping what it does. Probably the word cable that is throwing my brain off. The other day, I downloaded Virtual Audio Cable. I took a quick look , got awfully confused, and closed the application. I figure that this weekend, I will open it again and finally try to figure it out. Would I be far off if I guess that VAC essentially creates an audio IN and OUT path similar to having a second sound card? I am not sure that I have any ham radio applications that require VAC, but i figure I better finally learn what it can do. Andy K3UK
[digitalradio] Interface help please
I have a mfj 1275 with an 8pin output, does anybody know what i would have to do to change it to 4 pin output for a kenwood ts-830S... i would like to build an adaptor or change the cable end to 4 pin Thanks Kb0swo
Re: [digitalradio] SDR-Radio with DM780 20M Digital Band [4 Attachments]
Andy, I configured Multipsk as you described and the CPU usage seems to average about 5 percent. Panoramic mode is about the same. I've included a few screen shots so you could see the results. Mixw seems to tax the CPU the same way as Multipsk does, but Fldigi needs a bit more to run - CPU usage jumped to 10%. I guess it's the difference in RAM. Would like to hear how the Vista laptop works out. Please let use know. Tony -K2MO PS: We're about the same here Andy, thanks for asking. Still waiting for research to catch up with type-I. Hope all is well with you and yours my friend. - Original Message - From: Andy obrien To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, January 29, 2010 3:55 PM Subject: Re: [digitalradio] SDR-Radio with DM780 20M Digital Band Tony, my shack PC sounds like yours. A Dell P4, 2.3 CPU , but only 1 gig of RAM. Perhaps we can compare current system resource utilization for regular Multipsk ? Regular Multipsk in PSK31 mode with a 4,3 Khz waterfall uses 25 % of CPU. With RS ID on , about the same 25-26% With Panoramic decode.. CPU increases to around 30%. Then Multipsk with Direct I/Q mode invoked , CPU increases to 60% Then RS ID in SDR /IQ direct invoked, Multipsk uses 90% of my CPU. The above is JUST Multipsk related, obviously other applications , like a web browser being open, add more demand. My daughter is away skiing this weekend, so I may borrow her Vista laptop and do a comparison. I do not know what is realistic for Multipsk with all its SDR receive capability and RS ID. I don;t really understand what actual performance increase one could expect if CPU was 3.0 Ghz rather than 2.3, Also not sure what performance improvement going to a dual core around the same clock speed would produce. On my shack PC, Multipsk seems close , I am guessing if I could eek out another 10% it would run just fine. I'm reluctant to put more RAM in to an old machine, but I do have a compatible 1 Gig memory chip that i could pilfer from another PC and see if 2 gigs of RAM ease demand on the CPU. I'm guessing it would not make much difference. I do have plenty of HD space. Hope you and the family are all OK, Andy. Andy On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 2:36 PM, Tony d...@optonline.net wrote: Andy, I plan on switching to SDR in the near future. My current PC is a dual CPU 2.2GHz Dell with 3 GHz RAM. Any idea what the minimum PC requirement is to run Multipsk with SDR? Could you also tell us what processor you're running now? Thanks, Tony -K2MO - Original Message - From: Andy obrien To: digitalradio Sent: Friday, January 29, 2010 9:11 AM Subject: [digitalradio] SDR-Radio with DM780 20M Digital Band One of the things that I wanted to accomplish with an SDR receiver, is the ability to keep an eye on the whole 14065 to 14115 frequency range. If I was down on 14074 monitoring ALE 400 traffic, I would miss Olivia signals that popped up in the 14109 area. I would also miss Hell signals at 14068. Now the SDR affords the opportunity to keep an eye all all at once. My venture in to SDR from a digital mode perspective has led to a discovery that, other than Multipsk, the current state of the art does not support direct monitoring of wider I/Q data. I'm also challenged in that my PC cannot cope with the Multipsk CPU demand when I try direct monitoring. So, at the moment I am visually monitoring signals with the SDR and using traditional software methods to decode the 3-4 kHz of audio that is fed from the SDR to applications like DM780 or Fldigi. At this screen shot http://www.obriensweb.com/sdrdm780.jpg you will see how it appears. I am simply using DM780 and SDR-Radio software together. When I need to transmit, I just use my TS2000 after dialing in the signal discovered by the SDR receiver. Simon HB9DRV will likely integrate these two applications later in 2010. I did catch a Russian on RTTY this morning that I would have otherwise missed while I was slumming it in PSK31-land.. Multisk does RS-ID over this entire 14065-14115 portion, and DM780 is likely going to include this ability in the future. If people use RS-ID often enough, it will be really cool to monitor 14065-14115 and get RS ID alerts. So, just over a week playing around with the SDR receiver... I see the potential... digital mode applications are not quite there yet. When they are there (as in Multipsk) my PC isn't. This $41.00 Ebay PC may eventually get retired for a slightly improved one with better CPU. OK, back to keeping an eye on 14065-14115. A-ha, an SV3 calling CQ RTTY, 14082. Andy K3UK
Re: [digitalradio] SDR-Radio with DM780 20M Digital Band
Patrick, Thanks for the information. As you may have read from my reply to Andy, my CPU usage seems to be very low with Multipsk. It's well below 10%. Is there a particular Multipsk mode or configuration that would tax the system? I'd like to try it and see how it affects CPU usage. Merci mon ami... Tony -K2MO - Original Message - From: Patrick Lindecker To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, January 29, 2010 4:51 PM Subject: Re: [digitalradio] SDR-Radio with DM780 20M Digital Band Hello Tony, I have here two PC XP at about 2.4 GHz (single core): I have compare these two XP computers on the same file to decode (in 110A): * the first one (the oldest) which is an AMD Atlon 2500+ 1.09 GHz 768 Ko RAM takes 75 seconds to decode it, * the second one which is an AMD Atlon 2400+ 2 GHz 736 Ko RAM takes 20 seconds to decode it. On the most modern (about 3 years old) with SdR and RS ID detection on 44 KHz, the CPU load is about 35 to 40 %, but on the old one it is 100 % (the program does not work in fact). So normally with a modern PC it is OK. With an old PC, it can be problematic. Note: with my Vista laptop (dual core), the CPU load is about 25 % in the same conditions. 73 Patrick - Original Message - From: Tony To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, January 29, 2010 8:36 PM Subject: Re: [digitalradio] SDR-Radio with DM780 20M Digital Band Andy, I plan on switching to SDR in the near future. My current PC is a dual CPU 2.2GHz Dell with 3 GHz RAM. Any idea what the minimum PC requirement is to run Multipsk with SDR? Could you also tell us what processor you're running now? Thanks, Tony -K2MO - Original Message - From: Andy obrien To: digitalradio Sent: Friday, January 29, 2010 9:11 AM Subject: [digitalradio] SDR-Radio with DM780 20M Digital Band One of the things that I wanted to accomplish with an SDR receiver, is the ability to keep an eye on the whole 14065 to 14115 frequency range. If I was down on 14074 monitoring ALE 400 traffic, I would miss Olivia signals that popped up in the 14109 area. I would also miss Hell signals at 14068. Now the SDR affords the opportunity to keep an eye all all at once. My venture in to SDR from a digital mode perspective has led to a discovery that, other than Multipsk, the current state of the art does not support direct monitoring of wider I/Q data. I'm also challenged in that my PC cannot cope with the Multipsk CPU demand when I try direct monitoring. So, at the moment I am visually monitoring signals with the SDR and using traditional software methods to decode the 3-4 kHz of audio that is fed from the SDR to applications like DM780 or Fldigi. At this screen shot http://www.obriensweb.com/sdrdm780.jpg you will see how it appears. I am simply using DM780 and SDR-Radio software together. When I need to transmit, I just use my TS2000 after dialing in the signal discovered by the SDR receiver. Simon HB9DRV will likely integrate these two applications later in 2010. I did catch a Russian on RTTY this morning that I would have otherwise missed while I was slumming it in PSK31-land.. Multisk does RS-ID over this entire 14065-14115 portion, and DM780 is likely going to include this ability in the future. If people use RS-ID often enough, it will be really cool to monitor 14065-14115 and get RS ID alerts. So, just over a week playing around with the SDR receiver... I see the potential... digital mode applications are not quite there yet. When they are there (as in Multipsk) my PC isn't. This $41.00 Ebay PC may eventually get retired for a slightly improved one with better CPU. OK, back to keeping an eye on 14065-14115. A-ha, an SV3 calling CQ RTTY, 14082. Andy K3UK
