I decided to try hooking up my new IC-746 with NA for the first time this
weekend so I could fool around in the ARRL VHF contest. But... No matter
what I tried, I couldn't seem to make the program recognize the radio. It
happily controls my FT-1000, but absolutely refuses to do anything with the
IC-746. All I get is a short beep when the logging screen appears, then
nothing. I spent a couple of hours trying various things, all to no avail.
I'm running NA under real DOS 6.2, not one of the Win32 versions.
Here's my port setup:
COM1 -- IRQ 4, Address 3F8
COM2 -- IRQ 3, Address 2F8
COM3 -- IRQ 10, Address 3E8
COM4 -- IRQ 11, Address 2E8
(This is a Byterunner card that actually provides 8 ports, with COM5-COM8
using a shared interrupt, but DOS will only recognize the first four ports.)
The FT-1000 and the IC-746 RS-232 interfaces are identical electrically, so
I don't think it's a matter of asserting DTR and/or RTS lines. Or does NA
do something different on COM1 and COM2 than it does on COM4 (where I have
the FT-1000)?
Here's what I've done so far in trying to troubleshoot the problem:
1. Tried defining the radio as another kind of Icom, resetting the radio
address to match. I tried 735, 751, 765 and 725, since I had the addresses
for these types. I can't understand why lying to the program about the
radio type and setting the 746 to the correct address for that radio type
doesn't give me at least minimal functionality.
2. Fooled with the Baud rate of the radio, trying 4800, 9600, and AUTO.
3. Tried swapping the rotor and the radio from COM1 and COM2, respectively.
The rotor works on either port, but the radio on neither.
4. Tried various NA.EXE versions, starting with 10.53 and working backwards
to 10.40.
5. Verified the radio is communicating via the port in DOS (any of several
Windows 32 apps that control the radio work just fine using the default
address of 56H) by opening the port with a terminal program. The radio
returns lots of digital stuff when you change bands, etc.
I've about exhausted all the possibilities I can think of, without success,
so now I'm appealing for anyone who reads the mailing list and who has
successfully controlled an IC-746 (especially on 6 and 2 meters) to please
e-mail me with the particulars. I need all the gory details: Port number,
baud rate, radio address, exact definition used in CONFIG.EXE, etc., etc.
Copying the reflector would probably be in order, too, as I suspect I must
not be the only one who has encountered this problem.
Now that I finally have two computer-controllable radios, I'd really like
to take advantage of them both under NA. Hope someone out there can make it so.
P.S. to K8CC:
I'd like to see the documentation provide information that at least lists
the addresses and baud rates assumed for the various radios. The RADIOS.LST
file is strictly a text file with a list of radio names, so I assume this
information is hard-coded into the NA.EXE somewhere. What would be even
better would be the ability to set the address from within CONFIG.EXE.
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