[Xastir] ancient history question: HK232

[BDonnell at ar-northwest.com]

Hi All,

Another solution to the PK-232/HK-232 problem of forgetting its settings is to re-install/connect the memory backup battery.  It will prevent the TNC from forgetting its settings when it is turned off.  

AEA (my former employer) used a 3-cell AA battery holder initially, later a 3V LiIon watch battery, to perform this function.  Most folks end up forgetting about the AA batteries, so that they stay in the TNC long enough to leak, which makes the lithium battery is a better way to go, if you can find one with wire leads already attached.  DO NOT SOLDER LEADS ONTO A LiIon BATTERY - the heat can cause them to EXPLODE!  One technique that folks have used to attach leads is to solder the wires you wish to use, to solder lugs, then insert the battery and the solder lugs into an appropriately sized piece of heat shrinkable tubing, then shrinking the tubing around the battery, to provide tension to press the solder lugs against the LiIon battery.

Also, if you use the memory backup battery, be sure jumper JP1 is installed - that's the means of connecting and disconnecting the battery, without having to remove the battery.  Many folks also added wires and either a normally closed pushbutton, or a toggle switch, to the JP1 connection points, and mounted their choice of switch to the rear panel.  On early PK-232's, and stock KH-232's, turning the power off to the TNC, while the switch is off, will usually require that the power be off 5-10 seconds, with no backup battery power, to expend the charge in the bypass capacitors associated with the memory IC's.  PK-232MBX's with the second generation PC board (those with an access hole in the bottom for reaching JP1) normally require the jumper to be removed for 3 minutes, along with having the PK-232MBX power turned off or disconnected, to assure that they'd forget their settings.  

Also, the asterisk being sent for the autobaud function should not be followed by a carriage return.  The autobaud routine actually sets the serial port baud rate to the fastest that it can, then analyzes the pattern of "characters" it sees to figure out what baud rate was actually sent by the computer.  Later versions were also able to detect the data bits and parity, such that if you used 8-bit, no parity, it'd pick up on that, and set its serial port to match.  However I can't speak on that to the firmware version that Heath shipped.

Also, it may still be possible, but expensive, to add all of the upgrades that AEA offered, to an HK-232.  It might actually be cheaper to buy a new (brought back into production) PK-232MBX from Timewave, than to buy all of the various upgrade kits needed to make an old-timer current.

73, Bob, KD7NM
Owner of PK-232 #10




> -----Original Message-----
> From: xastir-bounces at xastir.org [mailto:xastir-bounces at xastir.org]On
> Behalf Of mark
> Sent: Sunday, March 11, 2007 12:24 PM
> To: xastir at xastir.org
> Subject: Re: [Xastir] ancient history question: HK232
> 
> 
> Thanks y'all.
> 
> I'll see what those other config files do with this Smithsonian
> artifact.  It give me a starting place to experiment, and 
> that's what I
> really needed.
> 
> My gratitude,
> 
> - Mark
> N4CMB
> 
> On Sun, 2007-03-11 at 00:25 -0800, Curt Mills wrote:
> > On Sat, 10 Mar 2007, Bob Nielsen wrote:
> > 
> > > I suspect that tnc-startup.aea might be more appropriate, 
> since the HK232 is
> > > really a PK232 in disguise.
> > 
> > He specifically talked about adding delays between commands and
> > such, which is one of the things he can learn from the files I
> > mentioned.
> > 
> > Once he gets based the autobaud routine, yes he should model his
> > files off the AEA start/stop files as you sugggest.
> > 
> 
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