Newbie has a question.

[jeepguy6694]

I hope someone can answer a question i have. I am basically ham radio illiterate, I have the basics on how a ham radio works. The question i have is, can a computer program be sent over the air waves using a ham radio and repeaters? This is for book research, and any help would be great.

 

[roadrage]

My recommendation would be to visit the FCC website or ARRL. You should be able to pull up some research material there.

 

[Captain Kilowatt]

Short answer is yes technically it is possible but you have to have the proper gear on each end to encode the data and decode it again. Basically the data is sent as a stream of audio tones. The amount of time it would take is one thing and the legalities of it are another.

 

[roadrage]

the legalities of it are another.

I thought that was more the object of question. Sending it over airwaves would work similar to a dial up modem. Just using amateur frequencies instead of the telephone lines for the delivery of the encoded text.

 

[Captain Kilowatt]

I thought that was more the object of question. Sending it over airwaves would work similar to a dial up modem. Just using amateur frequencies instead of the telephone lines for the delivery of the encoded text.

Exactly. I still remember back in the days of the old Tandy TRS-80 or CoCo-2 computers where programs were loaded onto a standard audio cassette tape for storage and transfer. My how things have changed. :laugh:

 

[w9cll]

Maybe the answer should be Yes you can but why would you.

 

[roadrage]

Exactly. I still remember back in the days of the old Tandy TRS-80 or CoCo-2 computers where programs were loaded onto a standard audio cassette tape for storage and transfer. My how things have changed. :laugh:

And that was cutting edge "DUDE, it just got my new computer and it has 8MB of ram, and a 356MB hard drive!! This thing is awesome"

 

[2RT307]

I am just learning about the digital modes myself. But yeah, thinking of the baud rates you can legally use over the ham frequencies, if the program is very large at all, it could take forever. Kind of like downloading stuff when I first got my Pentium 90 and was on CompuServe. :headbang Downright painful!

jeepguy, are you doing this research for a college course?

73,
RT307

 

[Captain Kilowatt]

And that was cutting edge "DUDE, it just got my new computer and it has 8MB of ram, and a 356MB hard drive!! This thing is awesome"

Far to MODERN my man, far too modern. I am talking about 64Kb of RAM expandable to 128Kb and what's a hard drive? That's what the audio cassettes were for.....mass storage. :laugh:

 

[Captain Kilowatt]

Speaking of how times have changed, two years ago I had a total brainfart while cleaning out the basement. I threw out a working TRS-80 model 1000 portable computer along with the carry case and cables.Our newsroom used it back in the early/mid 80's when it was cutting edge. I have kicked myself many times over that short lapse of mental faculties as I wonder what it would fetch on Ebay as a WORKING classic piece of [slash]junk[/slash] technology. {Cry_river}

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100

 

[Mudfoot]

Probably wanting to send remote commands for something.

 

[fodendaf]

Most programs are stored as 256bit extended ASCII. RTTY or PSK31 which were traditionally used for sending text only have a small character set consisting of little more than letters and numbers.
The free fldigi software suite, which has an app for sending PSK31, also has an app called flwrap which can compress extended ASCII text in to the smaller character set of PSK31 for transmission but would then need to be decompressed at the receiving end.
I would also recommend running an md5 checksum before transmission and after reception to ensure there are no errors in the app.

 

[jeepguy6694]

2RT307, No this is not for a college course. I am working on a book and come up with this idea. I don't know if it is new idea so i thought i would ask the experts.

 

[roadrage]

Far to MODERN my man, far too modern. I am talking about 64Kb of RAM expandable to 128Kb and what's a hard drive? That's what the audio cassettes were for.....mass storage. :laugh:

I remember we got a Commodore 64. I have no idea what that thing had for specs. I was probably 8. I just remember that my dad spent, what seemed like, all day typing in letters and numbers from a book. By night we had a fishing game. It was like a black blob that was supposed to be a boat. And little blobs that were fish. I was amazed at how cool it was.

 

[The Bruce]

And that was cutting edge "DUDE, it just got my new computer and it has 8MB of ram, and a 356MB hard drive!! This thing is awesome"

LOL, back in the days of the TRS-80, 8K (not 8MB) of RAM and only disk drives were the norm. And there is a sick part of me that would love to back and try loading a program via a tape-drive, but at least 720K disk drives were more the norm at that point.

My first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000 (a 2K POS, in its day) that relied on a tape drive. My success rate at loading a program was about 50/50, but it sure seemed fun at the time. Of course, that was after hours and hours of typing in BASIC programs and being able to successfully "record" them to cassette tape in the first place. In some ways, being a computer hobbyist back then is kind of the same as being a radio hobbyist of today.