[amsat-bb] Re: Icom 9100

[Jonathan Guthrie]

On 05/19/2010 03:33 AM, Trevor . wrote:
> I noted the 1240 MHz band coverage goes out to 1320 MHz, be useful in the UK as our 23cm band goes out to 1325. The incorporation of a USB port is good, wish all rigs had one.

Expanding on the message I wrote directly to Trevor:  USB is good, but I 
think Ethernet would be better, and I think it should speak an 
established protocol for controlling radios, like the rigctld protocol, 
which is based on TCP/IP.

USB is designed to connect peripherals to a main computer, which means 
that connecting to a radio using USB are going to need drivers to do it. 
  I expect that the radio will show up as a logical serial port, and it 
will be necessary to use a protocol to communicate over that serial port 
to control the radio.

On the other hand, Ethernet is for connecting separate systems together, 
and since most computers speak TCP/IP over Ethernet already, it wouldn't 
be necessary to create drivers to talk to the radio.  It would only be 
required to write applications that know how to use the protocol that 
the radio knows.  Since, in both cases, a protocol must be defined, the 
advantage goes to Ethernet, I think.  Further, if a previously defined 
protocol is used then it is likely that there may be available 
applications that already know how to drive the radio before the radio 
is even available.  I like the rigctld protocol because it's what the 
program I use (gpredict) knows.

In fact, at the cost bandied about for this radio, I think it should 
have 100Base-T switch built into it, although I agree with Bruce that 
real information about pricing won't be known until the dealers tell us 
what they're going to charge for it.

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