[Ham-Mac] quadra 630 software

[Chris Smolinski]

>  Like it or not ( I don't) our society has become conditioned to want the
>"new" primarily because it IS the "new", not because the old no longer does
>the job , and life cycle costs are routinely ignored.

To be honest, Carl, those programs on the old 8 bit machines (I wrote one
for the Apple // to decode fax 20 years ago) worked in an entirely
different way than modern decoding programs. Typically, you fed the audio
into a game port (after an op amp conditioning circuit) and they looked for
zero crossings. Worked great if you had an S9 signal. Modern programs use
processor intensive DSP algorithms to demodulate the signals, using a sound
card input. No extra hardware to build. Just run a cable from your rig's
speaker or line out jack to the microphone input of the computer.

> I would expect that others have already written morse and rtty programs for
>the "clunkers" better than my efforts might produce and I understand that
>more processing power is required for near real-time video and digital
>signal processing for psk etc.Although the "coders" seem to delight in doing
>things with old computers just to prove they are much better than the
>average programmer. Just as the average driver never uses half the power or
>maneuverability built into his car but the stunt driver knows how to wring
>out the last bit of performance.

In this case, the "old clunkers" *don't* have the horsepower to perform the
DSP calculcations necessary to demodulate and decode RTTY, SSTV, PSK31,
etc. There's no great conspiracy to prevent these old machines from being
used, they're simple too old.



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Chris Smolinski
Black Cat Systems
http://www.blackcatsystems.com
Macintosh Software
GM-10 Radiation detection system