Finds... (mainly Heathkit 3400)

From: John Lawson <jpl15_at_panix.com>
Date: Mon Apr 30 22:35:46 2001

  Roger.. congrats on the license and upgrade. Some while back the
subject of classiccmpers who are also hams came up. I think somewhere
around half of the active participants have the Affliction. Hmmm... a
Classic Computer Collector's Net on 20 or 40 Meters? We'd need to get
Sellam licensed... ;}


  Anyway... if by Packrat you mean an AEA PK232... they are a very nice
TNC/Modem/Decoder... function set depending on the ROM Rev. And,
(ObClassiccmp) I managed to purchase PK232 serial number 76 from a big ham
store in Los Angeles the week they were introduced. After serial #100,
production was transfered to Hong Kong, where it remained until AEA went
under in 95 or 96 (IIRC). Also (ObClassiccmp) the PK232s were run by a
classic Z80 chipset. And yes, I still own it, and two others of later
vintage I picked up along the way.

  If you need any help getting it on the air, let me know via private
e-mail and I'll try to help. Did you get any front-end software for it?
Especially the AEA product, PC-PakRatt? Any 'KISS' TNC software will talk
to the 232, and it has a native 'command-line' oriented structure that can
be accessed by anything that speaks RS232 ASCII, from 57 to 115K baud.
Many folks use them with dumb terminals, or PCs running terminal emu
software. Once, just for the Halibut, I hooked mine up to a DecWriter I
and it worked fine.

 Cheerz

KB6SCO /portable VU2
Received on Mon Apr 30 2001 - 22:35:46 BST