[UK-CONTEST] TS930 PIEXX uP board

[Bob Henderson]

There are probably several of you dedicated contest types back in the UK who
have long since revitalised your old faithful TS930S with the PIEXX uP
board.  Whereas, I am just a "Jonny-come-lately" in this regard and no doubt
missing a trick or two!

What I have done so far is to (per W6NL suggestion) remove most of that heat
generating trash from the psu fan housing and then restore the 15V and 8V
supply lines using 7815 and 7808 regulators mounted on the heatsink.  In the
space this created in the fan housing I have installed a DB9(M) connector to
which I have wired the computer interface cable from the PIEXX, and a DB9(F)
connector to which I have taken the 4-bit parallel band data (Yaesu format)
from the PIEXX, to use in driving a band decoder and hence antenna and
filter switching.

So far, I have only used the computer interface with DX4WIN but it seems to
work well configured as a standard Kenwood radio.  I have seen references to
programming the PIEXX to provide different emulations but I cannot
immediately comprehend the benefit of this.  Am I missing something?

It's a real pity the old TS930S uses a rotary switch to select mode as that
precludes computer selection of mode without significant re-engineering of
the radio.  It's a greater pity though that PIEXX didn't incorporate the
means to sense the mode switch.  I would have thought the sensed information
could have easily been encoded as two bit binary and used to report current
mode to the computer.  One way mode communication wouldn't have been as good
as full two way comms but it would have been a lot better than the current
none, I think.  Anyway, that aside I am highly delighted with the PIEXX
board which seems to have banished in one swoop all my reliability problems
and given the old radio a host of new functionality too.  Phew, I must be
brave to say all that.....I've only had it installed for two days!

Any tips or tricks you early adopters can pass on to help Jonny get more out
of the PIEXX would be greatly appreciated!

Best 73 from sunny Cyprus

Bob 5B4AGN, P3F, ZC4ZM (G3ZEM)