[Ham-Mac] Re USB Interfaces for Ham Radio

[Chris Smolinski]

David Anderson wrote:
> 
> on 4/2/02 4:06 am, John Rollins at kd7bcy@teleport.com wrote:
> > So what we really need for new Macs,
> > and new computers in general(PC's are slowly dropping "legacy"
> > support also), are USB-interfaced rigs, TNC's and everything else. If
> > a KPC-3 can run off a 9v battery, why couldn't it run from USB or
> > FireWire bus power? USB developer kits are a bit expensive for low
> > end and home built stuff, they could easily and cheaply be installed
> > in commercial rigs if the major brands decided to do it. I agree that lack of
> 'legacy' serial ports on new Macs is a problem if you want to control
> equipment from your computer.
> 
> However there are serial/USB adaptors available that will work (KeySpan).
> They are overpriced for what they are I feel however.

Yep, the Keyspan units are pricey. You can find them on Eb*y for $25 or
so. I have also seen some other brands for much less, I picked up an
Asian "no-name" one for $19 recently. It claimed to be Windows only, but
sure enough, there was a Mac driver on the floppy as well! Most of these
devices are using the same chip, so it is trivial for the mfg to include
a Mac driver.
 
> USB is limited to short distances unlike serial so this is a limitation.

10 or 15 feet at the max. Powered extender cables are available, but
you'd need a bunch of them to reach the 50ft (or longer) limit of RS232.
Of course, you're at 1 or 11 MHz, not 9600 baud ;-)
 
> The other problem is that special USB driver software is required, so even
> though a Rig in the future may have a USB interface, chances are that it
> probably won't come with a Mac USB Driver. I mean we already see this with
> many consumer products and I would imagine that Ham radio would be even
> worse.

If an Icom or Kenwood or whatever radio came out with a USB port, you
can bet that it will *only* have a Windows driver. Too bad, as with the
USB interface you could both control the radio and get sound over the
USB link as well, as an audio input source (which for HF would not have
to be 44.1 kHz 16 bit stereo, I think 11 kHz 8 bit mono would suffice!
<g> )

As an aside, I am playing with a "USB UART" from FTDI. It is what the
name says - a single chip that interfaces to USB, and gives you the
outputs of a standard UART (Tx, Rx, all the handshaking lines). This is
the little beast inside a lot of the USB/serial dongles. Makes it very
easy to migrate an existing serial design to USB. And surprise of
surprises, they offer MacOS drivers!  Nothing for OSX, but they claim it
is in the works.


73
Chris
N3JLY