[Coco] Look what Daniel got his scrubby dirty hands on.

[billg999 at cs.uofs.edu]

> On Sunday 23 February 2014 09:39:15 Juan Castro did opine:
>> Some googling told me this is a ham radio interface, and another guy on
the list, Alexandre Souza, informed us that's a Brazilian clone of the
original Kantronics board. (Heh, they didn't even bother to translate
the messages.)
>> https://plus.google.com/photos/+DanielCampos/albums/5983577070992272817
I know nothing of ham radio. How is this supposed to plug into the
radio? Is something like a modem needed in addition to that?

The cable you see coming off one corner would connect to a ham
transciever.

> Note, neither hand here is any where near a bible so I'm not swearing to
anything..
> I believe that is an interface for sending and receiving morse code,

Much more than CW.  Does RTTY (5 level BAUDOT) ASCII (7 level), AMTOR
(all the common modes, including FEC which was (is?) used for broadcast
messages.)

 although it could probably be re-programmed to work with a full 8 bit
wide
> data path.

Not sure what that means.  It does ASCII.

>            To send, it replaces the keyer, and to receive, it could be
listening to the BFO output from the radios speaker circuit.

Hooks up to the KEY jack, the microphone jack and the speaker/headphone
output.  Ham radio don't real use a BFO as you are probably thinking of
it.  That was a feature to allow AM type receivers to decode CW and Single
Side Band (SSB) audio signals.

>                                                              One thing
is
> certain, its old.

Old is a matter of opinion.  To some of us 1984 really isn't all that old.
I have a number of these knd of interfaces, but none for the COCO.  But I
did have programs that lett the COCO receive CW, RTTY, ASCII, AMTOR and
even Slow Scan TV using the cassette input.  I also had (actually, still
have somewhere) a RTTY/CS interface for my TRS-80 Model III.  Most were
eventually replaced by all-in-one units that also did Packet Radio and
connected tot he computer using a serial port.

>                   The radio operator of course needs a ham license of a
suitable class before you can "press the key" and
transmit.

There is no radio component in what you saw in the pictures.  One needs
a totally separet transmitter and receiver to actually use it although
a non-ham couls hook it to a receiver and at least listen.  All of those
modes are still in use today.

> Relatively famous in its day, I've no clue how useful it could be today
as
> I am not a ham, although some would argue that point :), but a retired
broadcast engineer.

Last I looked, Kantronics was still in business but probably does more
commercial than ham business today.

bill -- KB3YV