On Jun 17, 2010, at 6/17 9:33 AM, Tom Martin wrote:
> Why is Fldigi so popular? Tried many times to set it up and I can't
> get it to work.
IMHO, in answer to your question, I think there are two primary
reasons. One is that it is "cross platform" and the second is that it
supports many modes. It is also free (but so are many other software
modems).
I find more and more hams today either moves between operating systems
or use multiple operating systems. fldigi supports Windows, Linux and
Mac OS X. Except for little things, the feature set between the
different versions of fldigi are virtually identical.
On the Mac OS X, fldigi is a multiperson effort while cocoaModem is a
singer person effort. (By the way, "fl" = fast and light, and
"cocoa," in their names refer to the operating system frameworks which
the two programs are written on). With cocoaModem, I only implement
the stuff that I myself use. I don't use Olivia and MT63 because I
personally consider their bandwidths to be excessive (but really have
no problem if someone else uses it when the band is not crowded).
Because of that, ops that need Olivia and MT63 (and I have had
constant stream of requests, all of whom I point in the direction of
fldigi, now that it is available on Mac OS X today). fldigi supports
those modes and many more. The same would be true if you are a regular
MMTTY user on Windows who needs Olivia, although you have a wider
choice there (MultiPSK, etc).
As to your set up comment, I am not sure what to advise, since I have
only tried fldigi on Mac OS X. I don't know what the user interface
details are for Windows or Linux.
But... on Mac OS X, you need to do two things: the first, which you
must do, is to select the Modems menu in fldigi's "Configure," click
on the SndCrd tab to choose the Audio device and Audio settings --
they must point to the sound card that is connected to your radio.
Second, you need to figure out what PTT mechanism to use to key your
transmitter into transmit mode. Many rigs, like the K3 has an active
VOX circuit in digital modes, and you need not do anything special in
fldigi, just let the AFSK tone pair trigger VOX for you. While other
rigs, like the FT-1000MP disables VOX when in digital modes. If your
rig does not support VOX, you will need to use the "Rig" tab in the
"Configure" menu and either set up an RTS/DTR keyed PTT (through a
serial port) or perform PTT through the rig CAT commands.
Basically, with software (AFSK) modems, you need to (1) get audio from
the computer to the radio and get audio back from the radio (the sound
card interface) and (2) provide a way to key the transmitter into
transmit mode.
Get those two things to work properly, and you should be good to go
with fldigi (yeah, you need to make sure the RTTY tone pair of fldigi
has to match the rig's filter, etc, but you need to worry about that
even with other programs.
73
Chen, W7AY
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