--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Andy obrien wrote:
>
> >
> > I am probably more of an observer than most. I would like to be able to
> > monitor activity on all bands all the time. For less than $20 per band, a
> > softrock receiver kit can be purchased that monitors up to 96 KHz of
> > spectrum with a relatively inexpensive sound card. Unfortunately I don't
> > have the space or budget for all the computers and montors that would be
> > needed for this.
> >
> > Ed
> >
>
> Thanks Ed, glad you are enjoying DX Lab Suite. I wonder what PC and
> soundcard capability ones needs to run softrock and similar SDR cards
> ?
>
> Andy K3UK
Andy,
I am in the middle of the learning process now but here is a little bit of what
I have learned.
I have tried Rocky SDR software on 3 computers, a 2.8 GHz Celeron cpu with
WinXP, a 2.0 GHz dual core E2180 Pentium with WinXP and a quad core Q8200 cpu
with Vista. Even on the Celeron cpu it ran fine by itself but it struggled a
bit when DM780 was added to it. The dual core machine ran fine with Rocky and
MultiPSK and DM780 - and a few other programs. The Vista machine of course
runs with very low cpu load but has serious limitations on the software that
can be installed.
I unsuccessfully tried PowerSDR on a couple of the machines. SDRadio runs fine
on the dual core machine. I haven't tried it on the Celeron cpu. I tried the
M0GKG software on the dual core machine but couldn't get it to recognize any of
the sound cards.
The minimum requirements for the sound card are stereo line input and 48KHz
sampling rate. This allows you to view a 48KHz wide spectrum. I found some
inexpensive, used, Creative Soundblaster external USB sound cards with 24 bit,
96KHz sampling that work very well. I haven't made any sensitivity
measurements but they seem to be adaquate at least for the lower bands.
Unfortunately on the dual core WinXP machine, Rocky doesn't recognize this card
although the other programs do.
Two sound cards are required - one for the SDR radio RX and TX, and one for the
audio input and output (speaker and mic). For CW, paddle inputs are included
on the board that go into a serial port on the computer which does the CW
keying as well as the PTT.
For digital modes, a connection is required from the SDR software audio input
and output and the digital mode software. This can be a third sound card or a
Virtual Audio Cable program (VAC). I have not been able to get this to work on
either the Vista computer or the dual core WinXP machine. On the WinXP
machine, Rocky did not recognize the VAC software although other programs did.
In addition, MultiPSK 4.14 crashed after VAC was installed.
Windows Vista has serious limitations for the software installations. The
driver signing is enforced so drivers that do not have the Micro$oft ble$$ing
cannot be installed. That includes the USB to I2C driver for the DDS chip on
the Softrock that enables the center frequency to be set by the software and
the VAC software. The VAC web site has instructions for getting around this
limitation but after following those instructions the computer freezes on
startup. So at the moment I have a very high-powered, nearly new, dead
computer.
MultiPSK does have SDR capability built-in but I haven't tried it yet. Since
my interest is in operating digital modes that may be just what I need. That
will be my next area of exploration.
This may be more information than you needed or wanted but I hope it is helpful.
Ed
WB6YTE
