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One weekend, I came home and he showed me the radio-fax kit he'd bought. Say what??? It was a receiver that plugged into the headphone jack of a shortwave radio on one side and the serial port of the computer on the other side. The software would record and decode faxes of weather maps that were broadcast over shortwave then print them on the DeskJet 500c. But, when this kind of thing became widely available on the internet, he wouldn't switch until either they stopped broadcasting or the software didn't survive an OS upgrade. I forget which.

The geek needs to take a closer look at analog systems and HF radio.

Rafiofax is over ninety years old and still very much alive. NOAA RADIOFAX If you think terrestrial satellite data services are expensive and limited try pricing off-shore marine.

WR-G33EM Marine Receiver

I seem to remember a win95 radio card that slid into an AT slot back in the mid or late 90s...

WinRadio is still very much alive.

WinRadio builds SDR sets for marine, advanced hobbyist, and professional applications. Expect to pay $900-$1000 at entry level.

The WiNRADiO WR-G39DDCi 'EXCELSIOR' is a high-performance HF/VHF/UHF/SHF software-defined receiver with a frequency range from 9 kHz to 3500 MHz, with two independent channels of 4 MHz wide instantaneous bandwidth available for recording and further digital processing, plus a 16 MHz wide real-time spectrum analyzer.

WinRadio

Surely these guys should give acknowledgement to WinRadio? I first played with one of these around 1995. That particular model was a PCI card able to receive from close to DC through to 3GHz.

There were quite a few pages dedicated to the advances in digital radio and SDR in Monitoring Times a few months back.

One of the biggest advantages to a true SDR radio is that the manufacturer can build one or two models of radios, and have different software loads depending on bandsplit, features, costs, etc.

Motorola tried that with their Jedi-series and XTS series of handy talkies over the past decade... biggest problem was that it is pretty simple (technologically) to take a radio with no special features (smartnet, digital modes, tone signalling, etc.) and enable the features by cloning the software load of another model.

They did smarten up to that with the MTS2000 line of radios; any attempt to force a 'codeplug' into it that didn't belong would turn the unit into a brick, and you'd have to send it back to Motorola for a costly repair (as well as a stern talking to for 'hacking' at the radio).

True software defined radios would be a lot easier to secure... on paper it would drive prices way down... in reality, as long as the radio manufacturers control the public service contracts, prices will still remain sky high.

As an aside, WiNRADiO markets a device that could *almost* be considered an SDR device... super pricey for a receiver, but neat concept.

I am looking forward to the day we see true SDR transceivers.

I moved my scanner to my linux server and installed "sane". I installed "sane-twain" (free/OSS software) on my XP box, and it then accessed the scanner on the linux box quite happily. Some of the icons weren't as pretty as the windows driver, but all the same stuff was there.

Later I installed a dual-boot setup on my workstation. I used XP less and less because it was so SLOW and getting slower - I don't install much new software once i get set up either - and yes, I ran AdAware and anti-virus software.

Eventually, I only ever fired up windows to run Quickbooks. Now that I have Crossover Office installed, I don't even do that (crossover runs the native windows quickbooks just fine).

A few weeks ago I used Partition Magic to downsize my XP partition (which I had done once before) to make more room for linux. My XP partition was 15GB with about 3GB spare, while Linux was 8GB with no spare.

(un)fortunately, Partition magic trashed my XP partition..... so what did I do? stress? no... I just said "well, I don't use it, so why recover/re-install it? Partition Magic then proceeded to do a wonderful job deleting the XP partition and moving/resizing the Linux Ext3 partition. I now have a lovely 23GB linux partition with loads of free space. GNU parted provides similar capabilities on linux, though I have yet to check it out in person.

The best thing, is that I have a WinRadio card. Winradio stopped developing their linux drivers shortly after releasing a working open-source driver a few years back. Someone started a sourceforge page and updated the original driver. They haven't done any work on it for almost a year, but i was still able to download it and with about a day's work yesterday, I have my winradio card working on kernel 2.6. (yes, I have contacted the sourceforge page owner about sending the updates so everyone can use it).

Someone is going to say "but i can't write software so what good does that do me". My answer is that I don't write 99% of the software on my linux box. I just contribute where i can because i want to - it doesn't matter if I draw a few graphics, write code, make a web page, or do nothing at all, I can still use the work of people like myself.

The best part is that I don't have to start from scratch - I don't have to start writing the driver all over again just because Winradio don't want to update the drivers for my old card, and won't give me the source code. (although to their credit winradio do provide a windows driver for XP, even for this, their oldest card) Another example is the NVidia drivers - the official ones don't support Kernel 2.6 yet, but due to the open source component (the core of the driver and GL code is closed source), I can get a 2.6 driver from a third party, who, just like myself, did it for himself and released the result to the public.

Right now I have ALL my hardware working quickly and well, even though some of it is 5 or 6 years old, and ALL of it is 3+ years old, and I'm running the latest version of the OS.

I just can't get that anywhere else.

You're about to say "but I can't get drivers for the latest gadget". Well if the vendors followed the Winradio and NVidia examples, by releasing a linux driver, you wouldn't have that problem.

I woud love one too. Maybe there is some electronics magazine with the schematics for one? If you don't mind going over the top, then there is WiNRADIO and for Linux LiNRADIO which makes use of it.

Just because HAMs like myself tend to be hardware geeks does not necessarily mean we're software geeks too... though we probably pick it up a lot faster than the average joe. Just the tendency to tinker probably leads some HAMS to linux.

I'm an amateur operator, and I run windows AND linux. I'll admit, Windows is primarily for gaming, but there are some HAM-type applications that just are not as robust under linux. Here's a good example:

Winradio is a wonderful piece of scanning equipment, whose software runs best under windows. Yes, I'm aware of Linradio but the software is not as full-featured.

I'm sure other amateurs can come up with other examples. Personally, I'd like to know how many amateur operators run completely SANS windows. I'd lay even money that Bruce Perens doesn't own a windows box, so there's one...

WinRadio has been doing this for years, as least in a reception sense. I had one back in 1996 or so. It's a radio that either plugs in as a PCI card, or can hook up to a serial, USB, or PCMCIA slot. It's a wonderful piece of equipment. Biggest problem: Noise from your computer and/or monitor. But it's manageable, and beats those old fiddly push-button radios by a mile. It's Australian in origin, and since the American dollar is in the dumps don't count on getting one for less than $500 US or so.

The interesting part of this is that it was built into a hand-held computer for the first time, and the practical implementation means that any new radio service is a software upgrade. Think back to the Telco's when call display came out. Instead of upgrading the phones, they had to upgrade the entire network just for a service. This is an infrastructure for radio like the Internet, where services are layered over the basic medium.

I have several ISA devices that I still use...

One's a modem (a REAL modem that I can configure with jumpers, that works under linux... don't even get me started on winmodems)

I also have a WINRADIO (or LINRADIO under linux); Those come as ISA cards if you get the internal version...

Yes, I know it's a dinosaur hardware interface, but I still find it useful... and I'll bet I'm not the only one. Hardware may find itself deprecated and unsupported (Apple's Newton, anyone?), but still useful.

If you look at what their cards cost, price is no longer the issue.
Just look at their Winradio's pricelist, you will see that the price difference between the WR-3150i-DSP ($1995.00) and the WR-3150e ($1995.00) is nil. Yet one has a DSP the other doesn't. ( Comparison of Winradio's products )
The reason they build such cards is that they may implement reception restriction legislation in software rather then in hardware. Another reason is they will sell several cards to people that eventually will create their own software to circumvent those restrictions.
Quoted from two of their own product specifications : "Note: In some countries certain frequencies may be omitted due to government legislation." and " The frequency range is 150 kHz to 1.5 GHz. (The publicly available US version excludes cellular frequencies 825-849 and 869-894 MHz)." ( see: WR-3150e .

If you look at what their cards cost, price is no longer the issue.
Just look at their Winradio's pricelist, you will see that the price difference between the WR-3150i-DSP ($1995.00) and the WR-3150e ($1995.00) is nil. Yet one has a DSP the other doesn't. ( Comparison of Winradio's products )
The reason they build such cards is that they may implement reception restriction legislation in software rather then in hardware. Another reason is they will sell several cards to people that eventually will create their own software to circumvent those restrictions.
Quoted from two of their own product specifications : "Note: In some countries certain frequencies may be omitted due to government legislation." and " The frequency range is 150 kHz to 1.5 GHz. (The publicly available US version excludes cellular frequencies 825-849 and 869-894 MHz)." ( see: WR-3150e .

If you look at what their cards cost, price is no longer the issue.
Just look at their Winradio's pricelist, you will see that the price difference between the WR-3150i-DSP ($1995.00) and the WR-3150e ($1995.00) is nil. Yet one has a DSP the other doesn't. ( Comparison of Winradio's products )
The reason they build such cards is that they may implement reception restriction legislation in software rather then in hardware. Another reason is they will sell several cards to people that eventually will create their own software to circumvent those restrictions.
Quoted from two of their own product specifications : "Note: In some countries certain frequencies may be omitted due to government legislation." and " The frequency range is 150 kHz to 1.5 GHz. (The publicly available US version excludes cellular frequencies 825-849 and 869-894 MHz)." ( see: WR-3150e .

this page says "9 kHz to 30 MHz"

AFAIK, none of the commercial FM stations in the US are in that range.

I noticed that WiNRADiO also sells some other cards that can monitor frequencies other than shortwave radio...one card, the WR-3700i-DSP can monitor the range from 150kHz up to 4gHz...if everyone had one of these, would it be possible for a group like SETI@Home to make a huge, distributed radio telescope? Just a thought...