[SD-User] SD under Linux & Wine on the Asus EEE PC

[Ian Greenshields]

Having bought an Asus EEE PC a few months back, it struck me that this
is a superb lightweight & low cost (GBP200) PC for expeditions &
portable ops. The standard EEE PC runs Xandros (a version of Debian
Linux) as the operating system which does have a number of advantages,
but a plethora of ham logging programmes is not one of them.

Linux users will be aware of a programme called Wine, a compatibility
layer which allows native Windows programmes to run under Linux and,
to my great delight, I've found that SD runs very well under Wine.

For those who want to try it, the key steps are:

1. Install & configure Wine. This is well documented at
www.eeeuser.com and is much easier if the EEE is run in advanced mode.

2. Install SD (sdsetup.exe running under Wine does all the right things)

3. Run SD under Wine console mode ('wineconsole SD.EXE'). This is
important as SD runs in Console mode in Windows; it will not run in a
normal window.

4. Set border to zero in SD (needed for display stability under Wine/Linux)

At this point, the basic logger & scorer is working, but if rig
control & CW keying is required, it's necessary to configure a serial
port via a USB interface (the EEE has 3 USB ports but no serial port).

5. Check the USB to serial cable is recognised & identify what device
name the EEE has assigned to it. 'lsusb' from a console window will
show whether it's recognised and 'dmesg' will show what the device
name is.

USB to serial adapters can be something of lottery under Linux (and
Windows!). The drivers supplied with most USB to serial adapters are
for Windows and will be useless, so it's important to find one
supported directly by Linux. I've found those based on the Prolific
PL2303 chipset to be the most predictable and seem to work on the EEE
without any fiddling around. Elecraft's KUSB serial to USB adapter for
the K3 is one such device.

6. Create a symbolic link in ~/.wine/dosdevices using the desired COM
port number and USB serial port device name ('cd /.wine/dosdevices'
followed by 'ln -s /dev/ttyUSB1 com4'  assuming here dev is ttyUSB1
and COM4 will be used for SD).

7. From within SD, configure the radio & CW interfaces via the ports
command in the normal way. I use DTR on the same RS232 port as the rig
control for keying. If an additional port is needed for keying, for
example using Winkey, it will be necessary to define and configure an
additional com port by repeating steps 5 & 6 above.

That should be it!

73 Ian G4FSU