[Trlog] Re: TR on Linux

[Kevin Schmidt]

First let me say, I HAVE NOT USED ANY OF THIS ON THE AIR.

I am set up to run TR under linux very similarly to Doug W9WI.

dosemu 1.2.2
dosemu-freedos beta 9 rc5
running in an x window under xdosemu

Here is some information on the computers I have tried it out on:

Test computer 1
linux kernel 2.6.7, Alsa sound
TR 6.79
Pentium 4, 2.2 GHz, 512 MB memory

Test computer 2
linux kernel 2.4.22, OSS sound
TR 6.79
Dual 200MHz pentium pro, 128 MB memory

My comments:

1. I agree with Doug W9WI that it keys acceptably above 40 wpm. I usually start
it as "tr slow", but that does not seem to matter much.

2. I also agree that doing much in other windows causes the cw to stutter.
The 200 MHz machine seems to key as well as the 2.2 GHz one.  The CW
stutters if I use the mouse to drag windows around while it is sending. It
also stutters if I start up a cpu bound calculation in the background
(dosemu hogthreshold is set to the default of 1). However, during one
test, the cron daemon started a job to update the slocate database and
while accessing disk a lot, this did not seem to bother the cw sending.

3. sbdvp will play audio files but not record. When playing, the last
fraction of a second of the audio file is chopped off which could be
worked around by adding a little dead air at the end. If I get some
time I will try to debug this.

4. Parallel port keying works fine and keys the rig cleanly. You do need to
specify in the dosemu.conf which ports you want dosemu to have direct access
to and their addresses. I have not tried using serial ports directly.

5. PTT with the parallel port works too.

6. I have com1 and com2 defined as pseudo ttys as described previously on
the list. This allows me to connect to any standard linux utility. Both
test computers are networked (via my home ethernet and wireless
network with a dsl connection) I connected using telnet to a packet
network. Using TR's multi-networking is very easy.  I set MULTI PORT =
SERIAL 2 in LOGCFG.DAT on both computers, I had in dosemu.conf:
$_com2 = "/dev/ptyq2"
and after firing up xdosemu, I ran
ssh recievecomputer "cat < /dev/ttyq2" > /dev/ttyq2
in another window (receivecomputer is the name of the computer that
you receive from in TR's network).  Everything worked fine. I tested by
running tr debug with the simulator on both computers with qso's going
around the loop using my home wireless and ethernet.

73 Kevin w9cf

=-------------------------------------------------------------
Kevin Schmidt, w9cf at ptolemy.la.asu.edu, http://fermi.la.asu.edu/w9cf
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-1504
(480) 965-8240 Fax: (480) 965-7954