[aprssig] KPC3+ in CMD mode or KISS using XASTIR

[Drew Baxter]

Hi Patrick:

K1XVM runs Xastir and has for a long while.  It's also the backup DNS 
server for the intranet and microwave networking project here.

I use VNCServer as my XWindows Server, and then I run Xastir through it on 
FreeBSD.  I can safely say it's been a maint. free machine all in 
all.  When I had it all on an old Sparc Ultra 1, it was as well.  I had to 
down it this week to do some debug for another project using the hardware, 
but it's been up using a Belkin UPS without issues.  Best of all Xastir and 
VNCServer are FreeBSD ports, which means I can do a portupgrade and upgrade 
it and the dependencies with ease.

I use the Alinco DR-135TP because it was a relatively inexpensive TNC/2m 
Radio.  It doesn't seem to support KISS very well last time I tried it though.

There are worse things you could do than use Xastir.  Needless to say it 
works well on old and cheap hardware, the Ultra 1 I used to use was 100 
bucks on Ebay and it ran Debian Linux.

--Droo, K1XVM

At 12:01 AM 4/29/2005, Patrick Green wrote:
>Hi All,
>
>   I want to set up my dad with a Xastir setup.  He's 1 1/2 miles away
>and would serve extremely well as a fill in digi.  The issue that I'm
>worried about is staying on the air.  While XASTIR is a reliable
>program, I would like to have fallback capability in case the
>application isn't running, power outage, etc.  I have an old MFJ-1270B
>but was looking at the KPC3+ as something to purchase that is current
>in APRS support without a host program running.  Is it worth $200 to
>get a KPC3+?  I'm in awe that they want that much money for "old"
>technology.  Wow, it has 128K of memory.  I recently got a 128M USB
>flash drive for $5.  I figured that they would have made thousands of
>these things as they are 10+ years on the market now.  Let me know if
>it's worth the extra money or if running KISS with the MFJ is worth
>the risk.  Perhaps I should run VNC server and restart it should it
>fail.
>
>73 de Pat --- KA9SCF.
>
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