mikey@trsvax.UUCP (01/05/85)
Why buy an interface? You can build one for less than $50, and that includes the box, cables, and power supply. Using the Exar chips, a basic RTTY interface can be built with just two additional chips, a 1488 and a 1489. If you get ingenious, you can even get rid of these. The only other chip you might want is a driver for TX function. This makes a total of 5 chips, plus passive parts. Chip cost is under $12. If you're like me, the board will lay out exposed for a long time till you finally box it. The only difficult part is all the gottcha's on the RS-232. Things like will your RS-232 transmit without CD? How hard is it to use DTR to trigger your transmitter? This kind of stuff. If you build it in a box with switches, you can just hardwire a forced CD and CTS and use a dumb terminal package to transmit and receive. Hardware is the easy part, just tedious. The software can be as complex as you want it to be. mikey at trsvax