[htaprs] Re: Any fun projects for the winter?

[Arte Booten]

Hi all,

Jerry wrote:

>Make a handheld black box that is self contained where APRS will run on it
>with scalable maps & messaging capabilities as a minimum, touch screen with
>keyboard (have external plug-in as well), and micro drive slot, TX/RX radio
>on 144.39 with TNC GPS, and GPS and radio antennas (have external antenna
>capabilities as well). 

      Well, not handheld,  but self-contained.   I have one  of the old  Citadel
touch-screen industrial computers (a 486-25)  which now contains an HTX-202 and
an  AEA PCB-88  (the PC-card version of their PK-88 TNC).   The computer has an
IDE header,  which will allow an SD card with card>IDE adapter to be installed.
There is still plenty of room for an  OEM GPS card - and maybe even a 3 or 4 Ah
gel-cell for power outages.

      When these computers became available, Bob Bruninga WB4APR wrote a special
version of APRSDos for them called APRStouch.   Please note that these machines
are rare birds,  especially the 486's.   Occasionally, you'll find one on Ebay,
but bear in mind that they were all custom-programmed by  the manufacturer  for
the customer ... if you don't modify them to use and boot from the  SD  card it
will boot from the factory-programmed  EEPROM  unless you have the equipment to
burn a new one.                                                              73