I am evaluating my ability to move my shack from XP to Linux. My goal is to move 100% over to Linux. With that being said I ran into a new challange. The other night I removed my hard drive running XP (it is on the shelf but I can roll back if needed) and replaced it with a fresh HD and loaded Ubuntu on it to test my known working hardware configuration with Linux and software.
My current shack PC:
2 embedded serial ports on the motherboard
4 port PCI serial card
1 USB connection for my K1EL keyer
I am actually using 5 serial connections + 1 USB connection on my XP based configuration:
Com1: Rigblaster for Icom 756
Com2: Rig control for Icom 756
Com3: Rigblaster for Icom 706mkIIg
Com4: Rig control for Icom 706mkIIg
Com5: Rig control Elecraft K2
USB0: K1EL keyer
Under Linux it looks like the standard kernals only support 4 com ports. Unless I can easily change Ubuntu to support at least 5 com ports I will need to change how my shack is intgrated. My shack drives both HF and VHF-->microwaves so the integration is pretty important to me.
Any thoughts on how to drive 5 or 6 com ports?
73, John NG0R
It has been a long time since I fooled with serial ports. As I recall "setserial" was a utility that allowed tinkering with serial ports. I believe you use it to tell the kernel the port address and IRQ of your 5th port.
As I said, it has been a long long time since I needed to use that program and I could be way off base!
These days I just use USB to serial adapters and chase their changing names around (I tried to fix it in udev but all the suggestions given to me failed).
How many ttyS files do you see in /dev?
S0 thru S3.
Part of the challenge is that I don't know what all of the address/IRQ stuff for the card.
What does the USB-->Serial adapter show up as? I would think that it would be another tty/Sx kind of name but I don't know. I probably have an adapter around here that I could test that idea with. I will probably have more questions after this experiment if I can find my dongle to test with.
73, John NG0R
John Hoaglun
http://www.hoaglun.com
NG0R - EN25ue
Typically the USB adapters show up as ttyUSB0 and count up from there.
Can it be renamed or aliased as /dev/ttyS5 as an example?
If not will I be able to select /dev/ttyUSBx in field where they are expecting /dev/ttyS0?
John Hoaglun
http://www.hoaglun.com
NG0R - EN25ue
A well written program will allow editing the field if it's not shown. Fldigi is this way. I was able to get rig control working in CQRlog with my USB adapter. if need be, a symbolic link can be created (ln -s) to create a compatible name.
PS. Looking at your blog page, the linked crossover cable is incorrect. A crossover cable consists of a T568A on one end and a T568B wired plug on the other. The While/Blue and White/Brown pairs do not crossover as shown. Only the White/Orange and White/Green pairs crossover. With Power over Ethernet, the White/Blue and White/Brown carry that power with one pair being positive and the other negative. We all know what damage cross polarity can do! :-)
Does it mean that CQRLOG is badly written? The 'Edit QSO' option (right click on the record in the small log portion in upper part of the logging screen) allows editing of ALL fields. The same applies to ANY RECORD on the QSO List screen, there is also group edit possibility. What do you want more?
Of course not. I was thinking of my years of using various programs that had hard coded values with no way to change them as the hardware expanded and changed. So far I've not run into those issues with CQRlog. The few issues I have had I've already posted comments about.