Re: [amsat-bb] Solving the need for ISA or USB slots and Serial Ports

[Bruce Bostwick <lihan161051@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

What?!  A fully integrated ham/sat station using modern networking 
hardware?  What will happen to the folks with old 8086 PC's running 
DOS?  ;-)

Besides, if too many people go to Ethernet-based solutions, it might 
open up a window to let us Mac folks get *our* stations integrated 
without having to go buy a Windows machine .. not to mention leaving 
the door WIDE OPEN for the migration to Linux-based station control .. 
and you can't have that, can you?

LOL .. just being facetious .. sort of .. HHOS .. but it does *seem* 
like the ham community has been a PC-only clique for way too long.  
Standards that could be used to build an Ethernet-based integrated 
station, with all components (rotator/positioner, radio, sat tracking 
software, etc.) interconnected on a common channel, would be just the 
ticket to level the playing field and let everyone with a computer 
enjoy the benefits.  I'm all for it, if anyone's working on a standards 
document .. just look at what NMEA did for marine navigation systems 
and the spinoffs we enjoy with our APRS encoders, and you see what the 
potential is.  Make it modular enough, and you have yourself a really 
powerful and flexible technology with lots of applications.

Back to earth .. hihi .. the home automation folks have been getting 
into Ethernet, as I recall, and I think there are a variety of 
different Ethernet-based sensing and control boxes that could be used 
in various functions.  Don't know if they'll work specifically as COM 
ports for compatibility's sake, probably not, but I'm betting if new 
apps were developed to take advantage of them there'd be a virtually 
limitless range of uses for them .. worth checking out.

On Wednesday, Jul 2, 2003, at 10:54 US/Central, Assi Friedman wrote:

> David,
> I think its an excellent idea. Its about time the entire ground 
> station is
> on one LAN: Radio, TNC, Rotor controls, configuration matrixes.....
> Assi 4x1kx/kk7kx
>
>
>
>> A belated comment on this subject but...
>>
>> How much effort/cost is required for an Ethernet interface on the
>> rotator controller, rather than USB/serial/parallel/etc? As more 
>> people
>> end up with Ethernet on their home/ham computers, the idea of having
>> the rotator on the network seems appealing - 'just' connect it to the
>> hub/router/switch and any machine could operate it. Anybody have
>> experience with this? Or thoughts in general?
>>
>> David
>> VE3STI
>>
>> On Wednesday, June 25, 2003, at 10:54  AM, Howard Long wrote:
>>
>>>> The other question that comes to mind: why is this aspect
>>>> of the amateur satellite program so tightly bound to obsolete
>>>> hardware? Where are the PCI/USB tracking systems?
>>
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>
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           --... ...-- -.. . -. ..... ...- -...
                   Bruce Bostwick N5VB

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