[Xastir] soundmodem in linux without ax.25 kernel?

[Curt, WE7U]

On Thu, 17 Mar 2005, Jason Winningham wrote:

> Is there useful documentation somewhere? The soundmodem docs are pretty
> much useless.

I noticed that myself.

There are two ways to configure soundmodem, using the AX.25 stuff,
or using KISS TNC.  I chose the latter most recently (simpler).
Described here:

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Use "soundmodemconfig".  Create a device and set it up for KISS,
using "/dev/soundmodem0" as the device name.

Once you have that configured, re-run soundmodemconfig, using the
debug features in order to show a scope pattern of the incoming
signals.  Use a mixer device to adjust it appropriately so that you
get good decodes.  At this stage I was also getting decoded text on
the xterm I started it from.

Once you have that working, kill soundmodemconfig, become root, and
start up the soundmodem device:  On SuSE I just type
"/etc/rc.d/soundmodem start" because they have an rc script already
written and ready to go.

You can then start Xastir and create a Serial KISS TNC interface
which uses "/dev/soundmodem0".  At that point you're off to the
races.

As I recall I cannot run soundmodem config and get a scope trace
while the soundmodem daemon is running, so I have to stop it first.

If you want to configure it to be an AX.25 kernel interface, there
are more steps involved, but not all that many (assuming your kernel
has been compiled with AX.25 support already).  /etc/ax25/axports is
the main file to tinker with.  You need to add a line there for each
interface.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

I created scripts to bring up KISS ports (I used them with a KISS
TNC, not with soundmodem):


ax25.up:
--------
    /usr/sbin/kissattach /dev/ttyS1 aprs 44.24.???.???

    #                      port txd    slottime  persistence
    /usr/sbin/kissparms -p aprs -t 320 -s 200    -r 10

    /sbin/route add -net 44.0.0.0 netmask 255.0.0.0 dev ax0


ax25.down:
----------
    killall kissattach


listen:
-------
    listen -c -a


In this case my port name in axports was "aprs".  You can name it
anything you want.  I've had one named "147.40" in the past.  I
believe I have to be root to run any of those scripts, including
"listen".

--
Curt, WE7U.   APRS Client Comparisons: http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
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