[aprssig] Re: Agw tracker and Agw packet engine

[Stephen H. Smith]

sparkfel at qwest.net wrote:
> At 11:31 AM 1/14/2007, Stephen H. Smith wrote:
>
>
>> 1)   You will have to purchase the Packet Engine Pro.  The freeware 
>> version won't work with the Baycom modem on Win 2K or XP .
>> 2)  Even the Pro version (which you can try free for 30 days to "test 
>> drive")may not work,   since any laptop modern enough to run XP 
>> probably either a) doesn't have serial ports at all or b) has ACPI 
>> [power managed] serial ports which won't work with AGW.
>> The Baycom isn't really a modem at all.  It's a high-gain audio amp 
>> that feeds clipped and saturated receiver AUDIO (not demodulated 
>> serial data) into one of the hand shaking lines of the serial port 
>> (not the data-in line).  Software on the PC counts how many 
>> times/second the pin is flipped up and down to determine what audio 
>> tone freq is being heard.
>> In other words, the "modem" is in software inside the PC. This 
>> requires that the program running on the PC have direct access to the 
>> serial port HARDWARE, bypassing Windows' overhead.  This can be done 
>> in DOS, Win 3.x  and Win 95/98 but is nearly impossible to do in Win 
>> 2K or XP.
>>
>>
>> You will be better off trying to use AGW's soundcard mode instead.
>
> Interesting.  It's funny how so many people say serial ports don't 
> work under XP in DOS, but I've run Trunker (in a DOS Box) on several 
> XP machines, using a very simple two-level data slicer.  It also works 
> with other DOS-based decoder software for ACARS, POCSAG, etc.
>
> I will admit, most soundcard based decoders work well and are 
> generally easier to set up.
>




I'm just requoting what the AGW website says about  the Baycom -- that 
it won't work on the virtualized power-managed serial ports in 2K or XP. 





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