>From my past experience with 2 ICOM IC-765s, I ran down this rabbit hole
because ICOM's CT-17 gives you the ability to address up to 4 ICOM rigs via
a single port. ICOM gives you the ability to change addresses on each ICOM
radio so you have a unique path for data. It seemed like a wonderful way to
use a single serial port with multiple rigs, but it was not on TRlog's
compatibility list. The ability to pass that address information is not
within the user's ability to configure within TRlog, I don't think. If I
remember my discussions with Tree at the time, that functionality doesn't
exist. Neither is the concept of RADIO ONE/TWO CONTROL PORT being the same
port. I believe you will always get a configuration error on start up.
Using K5AF's arrangement, I would guess that TRlog doesn't realize you are
wanting to be in a true SO2R configuration and some of the features wouldn't
work correctly (Alt-D tuning recognition comes to mind. I guess TRlog would
think the second rig is on the same freq as the first rig). You would also
be limited to the same brand and possibly model rig for both radios or the
freq readout would be (possibly) messed up and show you on the wrong band.
TRlog REALLY likes a good ol' DOS machine with 4 real ports. I've just
spent several days installing a new machine and going through the process of
getting a card to handle 4 ports. I hope it lasts a long time because I
don't want to do THAT again soon. I seem to have forgotten all my DOS
commands. Fortunately, somebody had a great config.sys and autoexec.bat
suggestion in the archives, that worked great.
I guess the ultimate solution is for someone to build a DXdoubler type box
with 4 virtual serial ports that comes with a DOS USB driver and plugs into
a USB port. That way, we could use current boxes running DOS. I run DOS in
a partion of my new box and things work well.
My 2 cents...
Bob K5WA
Dale asks:
- Does this mean TRLog WILL work with two radios on one serial port? -
Tree already replied on this one, but I thought I'd bring up a long-ago
project. Way back when, I had to share an external RS-232 modem between two
terminal devices, with one serving as a RS-232 "sniffer". Isolation diodes
were used on the terminal port transmit data lines. Data received from the
modem was sent to the rx in data lines on both terminals. Either terminal
could talk to the modem as long as both didn't transmit at the same time.
The diodes prevented the tx outputs from the terminals from shorting each
other out.
A single serial port could in similar fashion be hooked to two radios.
Both radios would receive the RS-232 data from the serial port at the same
time, and presumably with radio addresses in place, the radio that wasn't
being addressed would ignore anything not sent expressly for it.
A problem would arise if both radios tried to talk back to the PC at the
same time. The result would be a collision and garbled data. If the software
could re-poll and hopefully only the targeted radio would then reply. With
some sort of ack/nak or packet header protocol in place, it might work, but
I suspect recovery from collisions would just take too long at RS-232
speeds. A message-buffered interface and hardware handshaking might help,
but this goes well past the cost and complexity of a Y-cable and a few
diodes.
73! - Mark K9TR
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