[aprssig] Digi-Ned: Was RE: aprssig Digest, Vol 35, Issue 21

[Dave Baxter]

Hi again...

Out of sequence, but..

OK, found, downloaded, and after some faffing about have a bootable
Digi_Ned floppy that works, well when booted in a normal PC at least...
(Of all the half dozen or so PC's in the house, only one that was not
actually in use has a usable and bootable floppy drive!  Think I need to
find the cleaning kit....)

I think Digi_Ned will fit the bill very well, as it's at the same time
power outage tolerant, and easy for someone to update or change if
needed, only needing a floppy disk swapping and a reset button pressing,
with an easy route back if the new config is wrong.


Next step is to extract one of the PC-104 systems, connect a floppy
drive and see what happens.  I have seen them boot from a floppy in the
past, so should be OK.  I've just found some old service cables that
will allow normal PC keyboard among other things to be connected.

Looking at one of these small PC boards, it turns out they are Ampro
CM2-SXi devices.  25MHz 386 based (not what I wrote earlier)  I do not
yet know exactly how much RAM they have, but the first scan for info on
the www says 2 or 4 MEG of the stuff.

There is also a PC-104 video card, configured to drive a 1/4 VGA mono
LCD, I do not yet have any info on them yet.  Some of the displays are
bad, or have been robbed for spares for others, that I do know.  Also I
was told some time back that they will run a "normal" VGA display.

We will see.  Still doesn't help with finding the time to play with all
this stuff.


Jim G1HUL.  I hear what you say, but we do not have any true TNC-2
"Clones", only TNC-220's and some other similar but non-clone devices,
but they will all do KISS (now)  I never found any digi only rom images
for the 220, KISS only yes. (but that had problems)  So I eventually
updated them to a much more recent firmware version I found.

I have also found that even with good backup batteries, the TNC's can be
"upset" if the power or something else disturbs them, and they don't
always come back to life without intervention, sometimes just a hard
off/on switch cycle, but sometimes they need some configuration item
"mending" thereafter.  At the moment though, I and others do have TNC
only based digis running in our shacks, mine (a 220) I can "get to" from
here if needed via the 'net, so long as it hasn't crashed (one event
like that so far, in a year of operation)  One of the others has a PK-88
running I think.

It seems that Digi_Ned has the ability to detect a "silent" TNC, and
reset it.  It certainly is quite persistent looking at what it sends out
of the serial port, with nothing else connected.

The plan at the moment is to put a digi together based on a battery less
TNC, Digi_Ned, and radio of course, and see how it fairs in the shack
environment at first, while we investigate the paperwork side of things.
DCC have been emailed, having spoken to one of them this morning on the
way into work.


Cheers All..

Dave G0WBX, will also go and find the Digi_Ned group too I think...
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