Sunday, Sept. 21, 2014 — Ham radio has changed a lot in a quarter of a century or so … at least from my perspective.
Computers were a part of my shack from the beginning of my ham career … my Commodore 64 and my 300-baud modem gave me access to ham radio content-related bulletin board systems (BBSs). I quickly upgraded my C-64 from tape drive to floppy disk and purchased an MFJ 1223 RTTY adapter. Of any accessory I purchased for the C-64, that interface gave me a ton of enjoyment and opened my ham experience up to the world of RTTY — and it was truly like finding a whole new experience in ham radio.
Thanks to an ad in QST, I subscribed to RTTY Journal, a newsletter that had its beginnings in 1953 and was published until a dozen years ago or so. It was my link to the RTTY world, and I coveted each issue.
At the time, my RTTY rig was a Yaesu FT-757GX, which I purchased at the Hoosier Hills Hamfest (Bedford, Ind.) for $600 from Larry Chapman, NE8V, one of the 3898 guys who used to hit all the hamfests and the 3898 Trader’s Net. I ran that rig for a good many years, acquiring others along the way. I no longer have the 757 setup at the operating desk, but I have 3 of them — the other two are “under-the-desk’ers,” one of which won’t power on, the second had no transmit. Project radios that will I project will stay that way, lol.
But the 757 and my C-64 did a great job getting me on the air with RTTY. There wasn’t a great deal of RTTY activity in Kentucky at times, so it was a kick to be a “wanted” state, hi hi.
Fast forward more than 25 years, and computers are certainly no novelty to the average ham’s shack; in fact, finding a shack that doesn’t have at least one computer would be the novelty these days. But one of the issues every computer owner faces — and perhaps hams more so — is dealing with aging computers and operating systems. Ham applications often will run fine on older operating systems (i.e. Windows XP) that are no longer supported.
After considerable badgering from my son, I decided to explore installing some flavor of Linux on one of my XP machines. After careful research — which amounted to a Google search, “Linux for idiots,” I decided to try Linux Mint. I first installed it as dual boot setup — so every time the PC boots you have to select Linux or Windows.
Linux Mint is an excellent Windows XP replacement; once installed, it includes the Libre Office suite (as good as Office and reasonably compatible) and other software for image editing, etc. I have not yet installed the Linux version of FLDigi, but will.
We have several Acer Aspire ZG5 netbooks that we used a couple of years ago, and they’re great little machines (designed for skinny, deft fingers of which I don’t possess). One of them that my wife used has an 8 GB SSD rather than a hard drive, and it has always been a very slow machine. The XP operating system just ran slower than molasses; it was pitiful. It was a good candidate for a Linux conversion.
After setting up a USB thumb drive with the Mint Linux OS, I booted from the USB and installed it. You have the option of running the Mint Linux OS without installing it; that way you have an opportunity to test drive it before you commit to installing it.
So how does it work? The system boots much more quickly than it did; the system still isn’t as fast as my new HP 3.2 GHz desktop, but it is a considerable upgrade from the very slow performance of XP on such a small SSD.
The netbook is supposed to have an 8GB SD card to help give the OS some “overhead,” but I needed the SD card for another project. I suspect the SD card would improve performance.
So why mess with the little bitty Acer? I would like to buy a very lightweight tablet for use in my travels; however the tablets I have (an Acer A-500 and W-500) are bulky and heavy. The W-500 isn’t a bad tablet either, but the battery in the one I bought cheap on eBay dies in less than 45 minutes — when it should have a life of 4 times that. For the time being, the little Acer running Linux Mint has a batter life of nearly 5 hours, and it will more than handle my needs while running about.
I know you probably have one (or more) PCs that have XP installed on them. You may want to keep them if you have a lot of software that you need … but if you’re just using it for web browsing, word processing and other duties, you’ll find that Linux Mint is worth your time. It is a cheap (i.e. FREE) way to get more life out of your computers (so you can put your money in some rare collectible key or new ham rig!).
73 es CUL de KY4Z … sk …. dit dit