[FADCA] Interesting Note

Mon Dec 20 00:47:12 EST 2004

On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 00:31:33 -0500, Russell Oder <oderr at bellsouth.net> wrote:
> Hi, Chuck, I will be in Tampa tomorrow at PACCOMM. I hope to be there by 9
> AM.
> I will be returning to Orange Park later in the day.
> 
> If you are in the area around lunch how about going to the resturant we went
> to when I was down before.

Let me see how things go. I have to go into the office tomorrow
morning, if I can
get out of the office then I will head that way and we can do so.

> 
> Regarding your "interesting note." I've been told that you can connect a
> REAL TNC to the radio to get the REAL Packet features.  I have the sister
> hand held with the "stupid" built in TNC but have never used it to send
> anything. I have used it to monitor APRS to see what it does. Has anyone
> connected a REAL TNC to either the D-7 or it's sister hand held - can't
> remember the model number.

I have done so with the 1k2 speed, but never been able to get a 9k6 tnc to
work with it. The external audio is supposed to pass the 9k6 audio path but
I have not been able to get it to work.

too bad the TNC code is not easier to change. That is what I really do not like
about all of these totally proprietary TNC's, you are basicly stuck
with what the
manufacturer sticks in your face and that is it. The KISS is broke on
both of them
too. On the handheld there is only room for one frame and that is it.
On the mobile
there was some other issue with KISS, I do not recall what it was, I
recall running
into it when I was trying to run AGWPE through it. Since you can not change the
EPROM there is no way to fix it or better yet run BPQKISS or 6pack.

Same goes for the Kantronics and AEA boxes, you are stuck with what the
manufacturer provides you and that is it. So if you want to run a single serial
port with multiple TNC's you are stuck. At least Kantronics has adopted the
BPQKiss format for the dual port devices, which makes it a lot easier to
talk to since all you need to do is talk to two addresses as though you had
two TNC's out there on a multi-drop. If you could change the address of each
one of those ports (maybe you can, do not recall it though) then you could have
address 00,01 in the first TNC and 02,03 in the third one all the way out to I
think 8 seudoports which would be 4 KPC9612's. 6pack would be even better.
But I do not think that Kantronics will probably do a 6pack eprom, I
suspect from
what I hear that their ham radio activity may be spooling down. Linda is getting
continual queries for servicing the things, not sure why but I suspect
that it has
to do with what they are able to work on out in KS.

AEA controllers have similar problems, being again proprietary, had they all
supported a TNC-2 clone in thier product line I think the whole thing  would be
somewhat more interesting. MFJ, like PacComm did do so, they had a few
more model differences that added some things here and there, PacComm also
has some different model things, but the basic tnc-2 code or any code done to
run on a TNC2 machine will run on them, so they are not shut out of
the after market
stuff.

> 
> Russ
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Chuck Hast" <wchast at gmail.com>
> To: "FADCA" <fadca at mailman.qth.net>
> Sent: Sunday, December 19, 2004 11:02 PM
> Subject: [FADCA] Interesting Note
> 
> > We discovered that the Kenwood D-7 series embedded TNC will not pass
> > non-pid f0 packets at the hamfest the other day, we tried to use the D-7
> > which I have in my van as a digi to get to Tampa (we were able to hit
> > the tampa switch just fine from my van, so I set the portaswitch up to
> digi
> > via the van back to tampa, no joy. At first we thought it was a timing
> issue
> > because it kept on doing a rr on the frame previous to the level 3 frame,
> > but when I went to the van and started looking at the link from the
> vantage
> > point of the digi, I realized that the digi was not passing the pid 01
> (ROSE
> > level 3 stuff) frames. I did not realize that digi's even looked at the
> PID in
> > a Ax25 frame as long as the frame was ax25. So if you are going to use
> > a Kenwood with the embedded radio as a digi to digipeat  level 3 stuff
> > don't waste your time.
> >
> > That puts Kenwood even lower on my list of data radios, in truth the TNC's
> > for those radios were more designed for the APRS crowd than anything
> > else, they do APRs pretty well, but are a bit stupid when it comes to
> regular
> > packet.
> >
> > Here is another bit of stupidity, the kenwood people in their infinite
> wisdom
> > have chosen to drop the ax25 ver 2, it is only running ver 1 in the TNC
> soooo...
> > If the far end sends a DISC frame your end will send a UA confirming the
> discon-
> > nect. BUT if the far end does not hear the UA come back it will send a
> > DISC again,
> > the disconnected TNC should send a DM saying I AM disconnected, shut up
> and
> > go away, but it does not, it sets there and sends NOTHING, so the far end
> sends
> > whatever it's retry count is of DISC frames until it times out. Don't
> > you just love
> > spectrum pollution like that? I will give them one good set of points
> > the 9k6 modem
> > and radio part work pretty well though the radio still needs about it
> seems like
> > 100ms to get things in the right state in order to send or receive data.
> >
> > Indeed it appears that connected mode was sort of a after thought, too
> > bad because
> > the radio is a pretty good box for packet. Sure wish there was a
> > simple way to put
> > in a different eprom, but I think it is all surface mount....
> >
> >
> > --
> > Chuck Hast
> > To paraphrase my flight instructor;
> > "the only dumb question is the one you DID NOT ask resulting in my going
> > out and having to identify your bits and pieces in the midst of torn
> > and twisted metal."
> > _______________________________________________
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> > FADCA at mailman.qth.net
> > http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/fadca
> 
> 

-- 
Chuck Hast 
To paraphrase my flight instructor;
"the only dumb question is the one you DID NOT ask resulting in my going
out and having to identify your bits and pieces in the midst of torn
and twisted metal."