[aprssig] Re: OT RE: ICOM 706 MKii G Packet experience.

[Stephen H. Smith]

Dave Baxter wrote:
> Cheers Mike.
>
> MS say that W2k never has, and never will natively support WPA in any form...
>   

But so many vendors's chipset-specific drivers do,  that the lack of 
support in the generic one-size-fits-all Windows native WiFi support is 
almost irrelevent. 

>
>
> What I would like however, is a source of economical USB sound cards (£15 or less) with just line (or at a pinch, mic) in/out, no 5.1 surround sound or other bells' whistles etc.  Everything over here (UK) seems to be aimed at the golded ears brigade, along with home theatre fan's, at elevated price levels.   The idea I had, was to enable a laptop to "connect" to "The Shack" with one USB lead, and an external hub.   Anyone done that yet?
>
>   

I basically do that in my mobile laptop installation, where a USB hub 
hosts two USB-to-serial "dongles" (one talks to the D700 and the other 
to the Yaesu FT-100), and a Griffen Electronics "iMic" external sound 
system. 
> Yes, I know of the RigBlaster, but not at that price thanks (£59 upwards for what is an average sound system + serial port from what I've seen)
>   


Check out the Griffen Electronics "iMic".  Despite the name, this is not 
a microphone.  It's a tiny external sound system  on the end of a 
18-inch-long USB cable, originally intended to add high-quality mic and 
line-level I/O to early Apple iMacs that lacked good internal sound 
systems.  It also works perfectly with Win 2K/XP where it 
"automagically" shows up as a generic "USB Sound System" when plugged in.  

The unit has two 3.5mm stereo mini-jacks on it; one for input and one 
for output.  The input jack can be set for either mic (10-100mV) or 
line-level (100mV to 1 volt) input by an actual mechanical slide switch 
on the side of the unit.  Very uncommon for computer stuff, the mic 
input is actually STEREO so one can take advantage of the dual-port TNC 
mode in the AGW Packet Engine

[With a stereo input to AGWpe, the left channel emulates one TNC and the 
right channel a second one at the same time.   You can emulate a KAM 
with one side at 300 baud the other at 1200, a pair of KPC3's with both 
sides at 1200, or a KPC9612 with one side at 1200 and the other at 9600.]

A picture of it is on my website at: 

     <http://wa8lmf.net/ham/iMic.JPG>

I have used the unit successfully with AGWpe, MixW and mmSSTV.     In 
the U.S. at least, the iMic sells for around USD $25.00 .    The unit 
weighs less than two ounces.  I have it Velcroed to the underside of my 
mobile laptop table.



--

Stephen H. Smith    wa8lmf (at) aol.com
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