Hi Alejandro, thanks for the feedback! ^^
- Just made a backup of that Y2K software, too!
I'm downloading the magazines right now, so I've got something to browse this evening!
(I also like that RTTY art, btw.)
Also thanks for visiting my little channel (it's a side hobby, a bit like a video diary of my current projects).
What you wrote about RTTY is very interesting to me!
It wasn' the TRS-80, but also a Z-80 computer that I grew up with, so I share this fascination.
(For some reason other Hams were seemingly heavily addicted to Apple II and C64 mainly, which confuses me.
After reading their postings, it's as if no other platforms ever existed. I barely find articles online about..
ZX-81, Colour Genie, Sharp MZ-80/700/800, TRS-80, CoCo, IMSAI 8080, Vtech Laser, TI99, Thomson To-7, etc.
To be fair, at least one of the HAM programs on C64 platform took my interest. Quick Brown Fox (QBF) was well made, apparently)
I started working RTTY quite late, after having had my first steps in Packet Radio (1k2 AFSK) on CB radio ( I was an SWL only then).
Back then I used a cheap mobile (car) radio by Team (?) which could do AM/FM and 40 channels.
On the PC side, I had a 386DX with a PC-COM modem (like BayCom) and the XPACKET software.
Everyhting ran on DOS, along with the TFPCX TSR program (a port of The Firmware for PCs).
In that time frame, I connected from digipeater to digipeater across my country on channel 24.
RTTY on the other hand, was something I was not able to do at the time.
My father, however, often told me stories about his time when worked RTTY on his
old station with Sharp MZ-80K computer, FT-277 and FT-221R transceivers.
He often received some signals from Melibokus (?) RTTY relay with his Sharp.
We still have some of the news of these blind transmissions (right term for this in English ?) on endless paper.
I must have been age 6 or 7 when he told me about RTTY (CW was beyond my abilities,
except for that kind of Morse you would read in old Mickey Mouse Magazines. Giving signals with a torch light and so on.)
From what I remember, he said the Sharp's program used the tape interface for decoding and Mark/Space.
We still have got that program as a listing, but the Compiler is lost for now ("FORM" Tiny Fortran).
My first steps on RTTY were with a direct conversion receiver made by MFJ..
It had a shiny metal plate and I bought it used by a private person that lived in a high-rise flat (must have been a HAM or SWL).
This thing worked, but was very unstable. Lot's of drifting. With a DOS PC and Sound Blaster, I got it working first time, but a filter converter would have ben nice.
When I tried again with MixW2, it worked better later on. To my surprise, however, these old RTTY decoders and 741 modems do work better than expected!
Often, as I found out, they could decode stuff better than nowadays hi-tec software. Especially that JV-Fax software can decode FAX/SSTV signals better than my modern software.
I wonder why. Mabye it's the better coding or the fact that these homebrew modems had better filtering/frequency response that nowadays cheap soundcards.
Edit: I've found an old schematic for a DIY RTTY scope, for displaying the RTTY cross/crossed bananas.
I was thinking about building one someday. What do you think ? 😀
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
//My video channel//
