[aprssig] Re: Agw tracker and Agw packet engine
Stephen H. Smith
wa8lmf2 at aol.com
Mon Jan 15 03:24:37 EST 2007
sparkfel at qwest.net wrote:
> At 11:31 AM 1/14/2007, Stephen H. Smith wrote:
>
>
>> 1) You will have to purchase the Packet Engine Pro. The freeware
>> version won't work with the Baycom modem on Win 2K or XP .
>> 2) Even the Pro version (which you can try free for 30 days to "test
>> drive")may not work, since any laptop modern enough to run XP
>> probably either a) doesn't have serial ports at all or b) has ACPI
>> [power managed] serial ports which won't work with AGW.
>> The Baycom isn't really a modem at all. It's a high-gain audio amp
>> that feeds clipped and saturated receiver AUDIO (not demodulated
>> serial data) into one of the hand shaking lines of the serial port
>> (not the data-in line). Software on the PC counts how many
>> times/second the pin is flipped up and down to determine what audio
>> tone freq is being heard.
>> In other words, the "modem" is in software inside the PC. This
>> requires that the program running on the PC have direct access to the
>> serial port HARDWARE, bypassing Windows' overhead. This can be done
>> in DOS, Win 3.x and Win 95/98 but is nearly impossible to do in Win
>> 2K or XP.
>>
>>
>> You will be better off trying to use AGW's soundcard mode instead.
>
> Interesting. It's funny how so many people say serial ports don't
> work under XP in DOS, but I've run Trunker (in a DOS Box) on several
> XP machines, using a very simple two-level data slicer. It also works
> with other DOS-based decoder software for ACARS, POCSAG, etc.
>
> I will admit, most soundcard based decoders work well and are
> generally easier to set up.
>
I'm just requoting what the AGW website says about the Baycom -- that
it won't work on the virtualized power-managed serial ports in 2K or XP.
--
Stephen H. Smith wa8lmf (at) aol.com
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