[Dxspider-support] Mini Announcement, plus some questions

[Iain Philipps]

Folks,

Here's a brief "heads up" regarding the current state of the effort to port
Spider to a Windows platform. I'm sure that at an appropriate moment Dirk
will decloak and let you have all the sordid details, but for now ...

1.    The core v1.47 code is apparently unconditionally stable on my
Windows/ME test platform.

2.    Within a couple of days we might reasonably expect the finishing
touches to the code which interfaces Spider to the SV2AGW Packet Engine.

3.    My own cluster - GB7DXA (spud.ath.cx) - is up and alive and accepting
connections on AX.25 RF and TCP/IP internet (telnet to port 7300). I
wouldn't suggest you this for other than test purposes, but if you can route
your data somehow to the Caterham nodes, you could connect out on the 2M
port (144.8875 MHz) to GB7DXA just to prove a point. Appreciate, though,
that this is a development platform, so it may or may not be there from time
to time.

4.    What's known not to work at this moment? AX.25 outbound connections.
Estimated time to fix? By the end of the month, at a guess.

5.    I have previously prepared an "idiot's guide" to configuring the
necessary software components (perl and it's modules - AGW is so easy, I
didn't bother) and installing the Spider software under Windows, and this
just needs a minor addition (the inclusion of a tiny amount of instruction
regarding Spider & AGWPE) to be brought up to date.

6.    All of the Unixy-things which you might guess wouldn't work on a
Microsoft platform do in fact work. And quite well, too.

7.    I've had this running on Win95, Win98SE, Win/ME, and NT 4.0/SP6. It is
not known to work on AppleDOS, RSX11M, RSTS-E or similar operating systems,
although it might.

8.    How much does it cost? Nothing, unless you need to run TCP/IP *on your
radio interface(s)*. In which case, you'll need to make a small (but
deserved) contribution to SV2AGW for his Packet Engine.

9.    I've done a lot less of the work than I thought I would; mainly, I've
been concerning myself with the platform differences and making a pig's ear
of the winclient.pl program. Dirk has to take (at least) 95% of the credit.
Having said that, I did do a fair amount of badgering .....

10.    If you want to be "an early adopter", then point your CVS client to
the usual place and slurp the project down. But you might just want to
ensure that you have preserved your 1.46 installation / configuration first.
You have been warned. (Of course, if you don't currently have an
installation, you can feel free ....)


So - to my questions.

1.    I had Martin (G1DVU) connect to my RF port as a test. He arrived at my
door with a '-15' SSID, and was logged in as 'G1DVU-15', which is fair
enough. Except that he was treated as a *completely* different station than
'G1DVU'. Did I read somewhere (and forget) that this is a Spider feature
that can be switched off? Or did I imagine that?

2.    Does anyone have direct experience of making a Baycom USCC work with
AGWPE? Since *all* of the hardware works fine in a DOS/BPQ environment, but
not under AGWPE, I guess it's "finger trouble" my end. Anyone care to try
and help?


Regards     -     Iain