[Yaesu] CATCC Software Beta Testing

[Steve Hajducek]

Hello fellow Amateurs,

To follow up on this weeks earlier message, I would first like
to thank everyone that has responded to date. This message adds
additional information that I should have provided in the first
one as evidenced by the number of questions recieved via e-mail,
I apologize for the following bandwidth.

For those that are not aware, I have a number of on going Amateur
Radio MS-Windows based software development projects underway. I
have been developing concepts for Amateur Radio software for years,
writing software to fill the gaps in what was available to the hobby
to meet my own specific needs. But only now is our radio equipments,
computer hardware and software tools at a level to allow me fully
develop my ideas. However, I do NOT plan on being an island of
change, I embrace the open nature of standards, such as the existing
CT .RES file format and the proposed Amateur Data Interchange Format
(ADIF) by WF1B and WN4AZY.

To date I have released only one software product to the hobby, some
of you may be familiar with my RAC 'n Rollup software in support of
the wonderful RAC Callbook CD-ROM. Well R 'n R was actually an out
growth product from code that was being written to support all the
popular CD-ROM callbooks (I settled on just the RAC CD-ROM in the end)
on a more substancial project called the "CAT Control Center" a.k.a.
CATCC.

The CATCC development effort provides FULL control of CAT capable radio
equipments in the vision of a central computerized/operator control point
amateur station via computer keyboard, pointing device, foot switch and
headset/boom microphone (cw is not forgotten!) that provides FULL control
of the station radio equipments, to include rotors, switch boxes etc. not
just frequency control and logging. Two versions will be released, CATCC
that which provides its own set of award tracking and reporting tools and
CATCCjr, which is designed to be used as a front end to any existing
logging program which imports data, such as "LOGic" by PDA. My outlook is
one that reconizes the fact that many excellent logging programs exist
with respect to award tracking and reporting (radio equipment control is
another story) for both DOS and Windows, and many amateurs have large data
bases invested in, so why completely move, just renovate, but if you want
to move, then move, we are going to offer the choice with CATCC/CATCCjr.

CATCC development began as a personal dream, then a fully developed concept
that is slowly turning into a reality for the entire hobby. It is NOT being
rushed, as it is a very complicated undertaking, as evidenced by the lack of
any software that even comes close. It is also not my only software develop-
ment project for the hobby, or my full time pursuit (although I wish it
were!) at the moment. CATCC has been under development for almost two years
as of this writing, slowed by the constrants of my full time employment and
other demands on my time (filling R 'n R orders... hi hi). I have had beta
testers domestically and abroad testing code for about 18 months now, with
very few problems encounted.

At present I am back adding additional radio support to CATCC, and just
wrote preliminary code to support the older FT-767GX and FT-980 series
of radios for those many Yaesu owners that had been requested it. I have
been loaned an FT-767GX by N2CUJ and that code works just fine (lots of
data exchange!) but need other people to beta test the new code also, as
not all these radios have the same timing and EPROM versions. Just like or
maybe even better than big companies, I want a large group of beta testers.

In the development of CATCC code I have written many small sample programs
to test interfacing with the various radio equipments. I have released some
of these demo programs for people to test their systems with and to sample
some of the features developed for CATCC. This week I have updated the
sampler of test rig control programs on the WEB site, these are bare bones
simple programs, but they provides many interesting features developed for
CATCC.

If you are interested in testing these little demo apps, then please visit
the web site at www.QTH.com/n2ckh.bytewise.org and click on the link labled
"demo rig control" to download CATCC_PR.ZIP, or send an e-mail message for
a file attachment, it is a 1MB. I welcome all comments, but remember these
are just toy test demos.

Should anyone decide to download the CATCCjr demo, be advised that it is a
very old (May '95 beta version stripped down and recompiled October '95)
beta of CATCC from early 1995 and only supports Yaesu and Kenwood radios
of recent manufacture, an updated CATCCjr will be released in the months
ahead.

I am still looking to add support for the JRC JST-145 and JST-245, Yaesu
FT-600, Icom IC-775 and Kenwood TS-870S radios as well as SGC, however I
need the programming documentation on all but the SGC. Should anyone be able
to scan to .BMP (or whatever) file format the documentation for the above
radios and e-mail them in a .zip file or be willing to fax (e-mail first
to check if I already have them, no sense in wasting faxes) the docs to
1-908-364-3517 it would be very much appreciated.

To date all my software written has been tested on the following radios by
myself and my beta testers, I need reports from users of the models not
mentioned below, such as a TS-690S, TS-950, FT-900AT, IC-706 etc.

Known radios used to date:

FT-840, FT-890, FT-990, FT-1000D, FT-736R, FT-767GX,

TS-450S, TS-850S

IC-737

I need beta testers for all makes and models, specifically the Yaesu
FT-1000D (etc.) and FT-1000MP, Kenwood TS-870, TS-950, IC-775 and the
various VHF/UHF/satellite rigs, also Ten-Tec, JRC and SGC rigs, if you
are interested check out the WEB site and e-mail your station capabilities,
I will have a specific beta tester application form page on the week site
this coming week.

To qualify for beta testing CATCC you must complete a beta tester agreement
and have WEB access. I should mention that all those that volunteer and are
accepted as beta testers and stick it out to the release of version 1.00,
will recieve FREE copies of CATCC, and NO, I do not plan on having 1 Billion
official beta testers, I do plan on selling this product so that I can pay
for its development and continue to bring out improved versions of CATCC
and other new products as well.

Due to my schedule restrictions I have come to the conclusion that CATCC
will not be released this year. However, an updated beta version will be
released for further wide area testing as soon as possible, the versions
that anyone can download from the WEB/BBS sites will always be very out
dated with respect to the current baseline however.

So anyone interested in coming along for my adventure just drop me a line,
and any RAC 'n Rollup users reading this, be advised that beta testing of
the next full release will be commencing soon, visit the WEB site during
the next few weeks for details.

Sincerely,


/s/ Stephen B. Hajducek, N2CKH






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