clements@bbnccq (10/30/85)
From: Bob Clements <clements@bbnccq.ARPA>
Fellow Packeteers:
Two comments on the article in the new QST on the TAPR, Heath and AEA TNCs...
1) The article says, approximately, that the TAPR code implements
the ARRL-blessed AX.25 (Service mark pending!) protocol. And that
it implements it correctly and has no bugs.
Comment: AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGHGHHHH!!!!! Yuck! Such lies!!!!
It implements only version 1 of the protocol, not the current V2.0.
And it has bugs all over the place, particularly under any congestion.
I am furious at TAPR for not getting out their maintenance release in
literally years. I refuse to even consider a TNC-2 for this reason.
ARRL continues to write only glowing reviews of anything at all.
I continue to have no faith in their reviews.
Yuck! Yuck!!! Ptooey!!!!!!
and now that I have that out of my system....
2) QST says the AEA has fixed the design bug that caused NOVRAM to
fail so much on TAPR TNCs. I have never seen any real claim
as to what needs to be done to fix it. Early rumors involved
the clock oscillator running at the wrong speed sometimes,
which it did, but that is NOT the thing (or the only thing)
killing the NOVRAM. Does anyone know what AEA did about the
NOVRAM? Packeterm uses a lithium battery and static RAM, but
maintains software compatibility. Heath added a feedback
loop in the reset circuit to get a longer reset pulse, which
may or may not be the reason my HD4040 NOVRAM works better than
the ones in my two TAPR TNC-1s. But I don't know anything about
the AEA circuit.
73,
Bob, K1BCron@BRL.ARPA (10/30/85)
From: Ron Natalie <ron@BRL.ARPA> I stopped reading QST several years ago when they published the article on how to implement a touch-tone decoder using 24 phase locked loops. -Ron
ron@brl-sem.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) (10/31/85)
> From: Ron Natalie <ron@BRL.ARPA>
I don't know who's responsible for gatewaying the list to
the USENET, it seems to be happening at mit-eddie. But it
would be nice if it didn't stick in the superfluous from
line and that it wouldn't set the Organisation field to MIT.
-RonSewhuk.HENR@Xerox.ARPA (11/05/85)
From: Sewhuk.HENR@Xerox.ARPA Not only that it makes other commercial companies look bad when the TAPR boys say that other companies TNCs are not compatible!!! They won't admit they didn't adhere to their own spec. I hope that TAPR, Heath, AEA and the rest of the TAPR clones are forced to update those buggy units out there. 73, Dave - N2GH (...>HALTON>ATTICA>N2GH)