Joe ..
I will note that finding OS/2 programs to work
with for Packet, APRS,
and other digital dainties are few and far between ...
I know of a website... I just have to remember
where it is... it has
a whole bunch 'o OS/2 ham stuff...
[...]
I'll stick with the original quip.. That site has about the same thoughts toward OS/2 stuff as there really is. There is still VERY little stuff that is
available for NATIVE OS/2 that is out there compared to other things.
You better believe that OS/2 will run what is out there for DOS and WIN 3.1 that is there for ham radio! However, there are some interesting things to watch for if you do use this stuff in DOS-VDM's or WIN ..
You need to realize that communications port routines in OS/2 are a whole new ball game! I've played with, I think, about every TNC and packet controller program in either DOS or WIN 3.1 on OS/2. My experience is that if you intend to go this way, you really need to invest in Ray Gwinn's SIO comm port routines. I believe that you will find that for some of the packet and other TNC programs that are in DOS or WIN, you may well have to tailor the RTS, CTS hard vs. software flow control and time share threading rates with Ray's toolset to optimize the operation.
That said, I run my entire fixed station site on an OS/2 system, but still with
a whole bunch of stuff in DOS-VDM's because I can't get the native OS/2 stuff I
want and don't have time to port what I started with to it.
My site is a complete very extensive low band CW only station. About all I work, other than for 2 meter coordination and so on, is 40 and 80 CW DX with full sized 4 element phased arrays on both 40 and 80. I drive an FT1000D into a full commercial qualtity pair of 4-400A's with vaccuum variables and the works into these arrays, full QSK from my own hardware control circuits and comm port routines, including interleaved full QSK CW from an MFJ-1278 from the
keyboard and back out to screen copy if I ever use it.
The entire station control program is custom written which drives not only the entire keying and control operations for antenna throw, but simultaneously handles all the logging, contest logging, and is auto-linked directly to the CALLBOOK database files on-disk and in real-time. As the call comes in it's auto-linked to look-up as well as to my Btrieve full station logs and records.
You can get a complete profile, lookup, QSO log traceback, all that stuff at the same time you are shown the most recent data on that call on screen including all the calculated headings, forward and reverse plus the distance. The system is interlinked to mini-prop as well as to auto-grayline calculations, giving you MUF and hops on screen as well. I've yet to graph the
proagation line ray tracing on the world clock,but if I ever get time to play, that's coming out of it too.
At the same time I'm cross connected to the IP back in town and to both the TELNET cluster(s) via ZOC 4.03, which has custome script output for hits and was intended for throwing synthetic voice robot talkback over a 2 meter alert pager to me for most wanteds. However, that's only about half done yet, gloom.
Add the OH2BN world cluster to that in an other screen via IP in real-time there as well.
The entire site is simultaneously feeding a BINK/MAX BBS system simultaneously,
which cross connectes with the ability to use a DOORWAY over the POTS phone lines that links to an AEA PK900 dual mode gateway between VHF packet and HF or
an other VHF packet channel. You can operate the packet racket via POTS dial-in with secured password operations .. or .. if I had the guts to try it .. the HF operation as well.
I've not completed the actual frequency and panel control of the FT1000D via its RS-232 channel yet. But at that time you could actually remotely operate the site via POTS that way too. More work looms, but I know how to do it. As another approach to the entire thing, you can actually see the entire desktop out there via POTS and HyperAccess for OS/2 as well as HyperHost for it at the site which is on line as well.
It works pretty good for HF CW contesting. The entire contest log not only auto-throws the QSL data direct from the CALLBOOK, but .. it also will issue a complete electronic QSL message which ...
automatically is stuffed into FIDONET as NETMAIL to the closest
Fido BBS sysop in the world ... if you will tell it the Fido
Address...
;)
We've proofed that with the ARRL watching the results. It was
VERY interesting to do that for an entire Field Day operation
locally here a couple times.
Most important, the entire radio log and control operation mirrors a commercially intended log and control game. I use the contest operations for proof of concept for professional management facility template operations! At the same time each contact is going into the log, it is doing something else!
Every operation is being carried on as if it was a full business professional relationship! Each one is the same thing as a client of patient for medical purposes! We are establishing the same as full professional medical case records and operations simuiltaneously with what you have read above. At the instant we have you in the log, you are already recorded as to a full professional operation, complete with access to an entire facility's full business suite. That includes the entire POS and real-time inventory accounting, and a full standard GAAP double-entry bookeeping and acounting game
for everything we did for you at that time for that event --- contact --- if you will, in near-real-time.
You can pull a complete double entry income statement and balance sheet for the
entire site after each and every contact, or event log. In real time. Facility
wide.
It is fascinating to watch that all develop over a LAN during, say, Field Day!
What happens is that we are playing like every contact is a new refugee in the camp. We know exactly how much water, fuel, blankets, meals,who go them, who was advanced cash or whatever, and it also operates back against an ANSI standard credit card billing game if you choose to bill out each and every contact ..
I still say that not much is really known about the use of OS/2 in NATIVE more for ham radio!
You can hear the site each Monday night on 3516 Khz where I echo the NCDX weekly DX list on CW at 0245 GMT. The site is audible even on 80 in Europe and
for sure all through the USA and Carribean plus some of South America there. I
take in the bulletin from Bob W6TI on simulcast on 14002 and 7016 into a computer file from over the air at 0100 GMT. The entire station the auto-sends
it back out on 3516 at 0245GMT!
I owe darned near everything I know and have to what I've learned from HAM radio and how it works ..
Sleep well; OS/2's still awake! ;)
Mike @ 1:117/3001
--- Maximus/2 3.01
* Origin: Ziplog Public Port (1:117/3001)