Article: 51251 of rec.radio.amateur.digital.misc Date: Wed, 05 Apr 2006 15:11:50 -0500 From: Tom Ring Subject: Re: PSK-31 interface help needed for FT-817 References: Message-ID: <44342487$0$7322$39cecf19@news.twtelecom.net> Rick WA1RKT wrote: > I have a new Yaesu FT-817ND that I would like to use on PSK-31. > > According to the manual, one should be able to just connect the radio > to the sound card without the need for any interface boxes such as the > Rigblaster or Nomic. > > I have done this with my old Icom IC-735 and it worked pretty well up > to about 10 watts of output, so one would think I should be able to > get away with it running only 5 watts or less on the FT-817. > > My question is, have any of you all done that with success? > > As for connections, I must say that the FT-817ND manual is pretty bad > at explaining how to hook it up. > > On page 38 the manual discusses SSB-based AFSK and shows the radio > connected to a TNC. > > Then on page 39 under PSK-31, it says only to "Connect the FT-817ND to > your computer's sound card or interface" without going into any detail > on how to do tyat. > > I can only assume that the connections for audio are the same as shown > on page 38, but they don't say that explicitly. > I had an 817, and ran the transmit and receive audio directly to the sound jacks on my laptop with no issues after I got the levels set correctly. It's possible you may have to pad the output to the rig a bit depending on what sound card you have. > The big question is, how is the PTT connected? Does that operate off > of DCD or DTR on a serial port? If so, note that the voltage coming > out of a serial port's handshake lines can be as much as +/- 15 volts > and still be within the RS-232 spec. I find it hard to believe that > +/- 15 volts on the PTT pin of the radio is OK. I made an optoisolator from an led and a phototransistor from Radio Shack. The led went to DTR with a current limiting resistor, something like 5K I think, and the phototransistor went to the PTT input and ground. Then I set PSK mode to USB for the PSK entry on the menu, and it worked fine. Tom K0TAR