![]() With my operating system issues resolved I replaced the dead CMOS battery to fix the time and date problem, this uses the same CR2032 that I used in the IC-28H. There was one driver for the infrared port that I couldn't find, but that was fixed by one of the Windows 7 updates. It was a painful process to locate the necessary drivers but eventually I found all that I needed. It wasn't a simple install though, Microsoft never intended to support old Thinkpads like the T42 on Windows 7, but Lenovo has an archive of old drivers for this laptop, most are for Windows XP or Windows 2008, but they work with Windows 7. The upside though is there is a plethora of cheap Windows 7 license keys available and it will run on a T42. Microsoft ended support for Windows 7 in the spring of 2020 which means that once all the updates have been installed there will never be any more. My next thought was Windows 8 as it's still supported, however the same problems exist for Windows 8 as they do with Windows 10. Even if you could get past this processor problem there are no device drivers for the T42 in Windows 10. My next thought was to upgrade to Windows 10 so I researched whether the T42 can support Windows 10, it turns out it cannot, there is a feature of the Dothan Pentium processor in the T42 that can't support Windows 10. Fine, I thought, I'll just use it as it is, but that was not to be either, Echolink would not run, I received numerous errors that simply were not worth chasing for an obsolete operating systems. When I put this computer in a drawer it was still a supported operating system and I was hoping that I'd be able to get the last of the updates, but it was not to be, every attempt to locate updates failed. If you haven't been under a rock for the last 10 years than you know that Windows XP was end of lifed years ago. Going into the BIOS setup I set the current time and date and watched as the computer booted into Windows XP. Out on the work bench it came and I powered it up, I was met with an error that the time and date were invalid. I was certain that the battery would be junk but I hoped the computer would still work. With the Cambio providing dissapointing results I dug through my drawers looking for an old IBM Thinkpad T42 that I'd intended to use for packet radio years before. Fortunately the manual for this radio is available so I was able to program in a handful of repeaters that I'm most likely to use. Referring to a copy of the service manual I was able to fix the battery by soldering in a CR2032 battery holder where the old battery was, and plugging in a new battery. I took a leap of faith that this radio had more life left in it and purchased the optional UT-29 PL module. This wasn't a show stopper though, in the short term I could always re-program the radio each time I turned it on, what was a show stopper was that the built in PL tone encoder lacked the frequency that I needed to transmit to my local repeater. The radio powered up and seemed functional but the CMOS battery was completely dead, this meant that any settings I put into the radio were lost when I turned off the power switch. I brought the IC-28H to my work bench to see if it could be brought back to life. Networking problems prevented us from acting on this plan that night and both the radio and the computer it was attached to sat idle for a decade doing nothing but collecting dust.įast forward to the early spring of 2020 when I discover that my Cambio and Boafeng won't accomplish what I desire. We attached it to a computer in my spare room hoping to remote control the computer to test out the functionality. A good friend of mine, who was the one who got me started in Ham, gave me an Icom IC-28H which had already been used for this purpose. Years ago when I first got started with Ham radio I also wanted to learn packet radio. Unfortunately while this was useful as a proof of concept it wasn't durable enough for reliable use. When I decided to re-engage with packet radio the Cambio seemed a good choice. The project was still important to me so I upgraded to a much more powerful computer and stuffed the Cambio in a drawer. The computer I show in my hardware setup article above is an RCA Cambio, I purchased this for another project a couple of years ago from WalMart for $99, it worked for couple of years but eventually the software I was running was updated to the point where the Atom processor could no longer keep up. It became apparent to me that I would not be able to eliminate the cross talk, wireless networking was proving ineffective at hosting Echolink, it was introducing too many delays so I needed to use Ethernet, unfortunately not only was my radio setup cheap, so was my computer.
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