[Ham-Mac] Computer CW help

[James Duffey]

Mark - For software, try cocoaModem 1.02 for Jaguar

http://homepage.mac.com/chen/Downloads/OtherDownloads/oldDownloads.html

CocoaModem is now in version 2, but that version will not run on  
10.2. Be sure to use 1.02. The older version runs fine on Jaguar, but  
does not have all features that the newer software has. It may tax  
your 266 MHz iMac. I ran it on a 266 MHz G3, but it really came to  
life when I installed a 400 MHz processor. CocoaModem is free, not  
supported, particularly in the older versions, and is very powerful.  
That said the author, Chen, W7AY, will answer e-mailed questions.

An alternate is MultiMode:

http://www.blackcatsystems.com/software/multimode.html

You will need a way to get the sound in to the iMac. If the iMac  
doesn't have a sound in, you will need an external USB sound input  
device, such as an iMic by Griffin. Then hook up the line out or  
speaker of your transceiver to the sound input to your computer. You  
can get the cable at Radio Shack. This will get you started on  
receive. You should probably isolate the computer from the radio to  
avoid ground loops and possible RF on the cables, but you can do this  
with a 1:1 transformer. Actually if the iMac has a microphone built  
in you can copy signals with good SNR by turning the rig's speaker on  
and just using the computer microphone as an input. This is not  
recommended for operating,  as room noises will cause you problems,  
but it is a quick and dirty way of getting signals into the imac to  
get a flavor of how things work.

To transmit you will need to connect the computer audio output to the  
rig's microphone input. Again you can do this with a simple cable,  
but again, you should really isolate the rig from the computer with a  
transformer. Next you will need a way to key the transmitter. You can  
start by switching it over manually, or using the rig's vox. You can  
use the computer to control the PTT, but you will likely need a USB  
to serial converte to accommodate these implementations. It will  
probably be difficult to use the rig's vox on CW as the first  
character may be truncated.

You can buy a commercial interface box, like a signalLink, or  
microham microKeyer/digiKeyer, that will take care of some or all of  
these issues for you. Here is one you can build yourself:

< http://wa8lmf.net/ham/tonekeyer.htm >

Using Google, you should be able to find several flavors of these  
around, both commercial or homebuilt.

Both the cocoaModem site and the MultiMode site have some discussion  
on interfacing the software to the rig and that is a good place to  
start. Holler if you have any more questions. - Duffey



On May 3, 2007, at 1:22 PM, Mark Brooky wrote:

Although I've been a ham for 30 years and a Mac user
for nine years, I don't grasp the concept of
interfacing the two. So I am reaching out for help.

What I would like to do is copy and send CW and RTTY
over HF using my Mac. I'm sure it is easy to do, but I
don't know what equipment I need to add and to hook it
up to make it work.

What I have now:
Icom IC-728 transceiver
iMac PowerPC G3 266 with 320 mb RAM, OS X 10.2

TNX
KE8FO

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--
James Duffey KK6MC/5
Cedar Crest NM 87008
DM65