Tying all the parts together is sometime the hardest part of the project. It shouldn’t be that way because we are Hams and as Hams we should be putting are radios together and designing our TNC’s from scratch - NOT. I know some of you are quite capable to do this and you can respectively move. For the rest of us think PacketRadio.com. Going by a couple of names, Bux-Comm has a huge selection of cable to interface your TNC to your radio. And if you are a little clever with cut and paste and a soldering iron, you can get the wiring diagram and make it yourself provided you soldering skill are sufficently advanced to make those extremely close multi-pin soldering connections.
You will need a cable to go from the TNC to the Radio. This is usually the hardest one to obtain or prepare or both.
You will also need the cable between the TNC and the computer. This is almost always a serial data cable with two 9 pin D-Sub connectors or 1 9 pin D-Sub and 1 25 pin D-Sub connectors. You can still find some of these in town if you look hard enough but they are getting more and more rare. Actually these are the same as the modem cable we used to use for dialup. Almost all modern gear is now USB (Ham radio stuff excluded - groan) the serial data cable are not stocked much now. You may have some in you junk box.
OK, you now have your serial cable but you don’t have a serial port on the computer? No problem, run out and buy a USB to serial port converter. Well wait a minute. If you have one or more, give it a try but not all USB to Serial Port converters are created equal. If yours doesn’t work and you need to buy new, we recommend the Keyspan unit. This was recommended to me by Ten Tec for the Pegasus. I have yet to find an application that the Keyspan did not work as required. Please CLICK HERE
