[TenTec] SoftWave SDR

[Lawrence Stoskopf]

All this about GPL has been interesting in that at Dayton some years ago I 
purchase a SoftWave ISA plug in receiver for (guessing) about what I paid 
for the SDR original.  Worked well until I upgraded to Win 98.  Seems that 
VisualBasic VBRUN keeps changing and not always backwards compatible.  
Finally managed to load in the software using the old VBRUN and then 
changing to the new one.  They had great SWL databases and code written in 
(?) Latvia or one of those 'captive' nations.  So I still have an ISA 
computer on the desk for legacy stuff. 

Well, someone from a major company asked if they could borrow it to see how 
it compared with their planned project.  "Shudder that anyone would do 
that!"  They then tried to contact the developers, no joy.  Rumor was that 
the company fell apart, guys not talking to one another. No code or 
development info anywhere.  There have apparently been a few of these RX 
around, but little info.  Basically junk. 

The same with the metricom 2.3 GHz modems that pyrojoe sells on eBay.  No 
data.  I did reverse engineer most of the RF stuff, but even data sheets on 
the parts are a bit hard to get and apparently all documentation was 
destroyed when the company failed. 

Such a shame the this valuable, proprietary info is so valuable that it is 
destroyed. 

With the stage of development with the SDR, you can at least look at a 
schematic, and play.  And this "lack of documentation" is much better than 
the above two examples. 

If you think the whimpering on the Orion list that arose when the Orion II 
was announced, wait until you see what happens here someday when the SDRXXX 
comes out with all of this code compiled and it includes some built in 
dongle which is needed to run the software. 

I for one would simply be happy to get yet another improvement in radio 
equipment/technology.  Just hope for some hooks so I don't have to discard 
because there is no software. 

On the basement shelves in rough order of accumulation since 1954:  homebrew 
rx/tx, ARC5 rx/tx/, Viking Valiant/Viking II, S40b, SX101Mk3/HT-32, 
homebrew, TS940 and now Orion & SDR1000 on the bench. 

I can still pull out the manual and fix all but the latter three easily.  Am 
hoping that the SDR series will continue the trend. 

N0UU