[aprssig] Replacement binaries for UIDIGI ? (stand-alone digi software)

[Scott Miller]

> It does look like everybody is keeping their TNC2 softwares as secret, and
> distributing only binaries.   Understandable when it was current stuff,
> but why still ?

Probably for the same reason hams like to sell 20 year old HTs for 80% 
of the purchase price.  We assign greater value to our stuff than is 
realistic.

Is the processor socketed on most TNC2 clones?  If so, you could just 
skip the Z80 programming entirely and build yourself a daughter board 
that'd plug in to the processor socket.  You've already got the RAM, 
RTC, and all of the radio interface stuff.  These days it's not hard to 
squeeze a decent microcontroller between the pins on a 0.600" wide DIP 
board.

Granted, you'd probably have $15 of parts in there rather than a $2 
EPROM, but it'd be a lot more flexible.  And you could work in C, Java, 
or whatever instead of Z80 assembly.

Scott
N1VG