All the equipment for the frequency bands gives an avarage radioroom less free space than a closet. A radio-amateur can never have enough room. An additional amount of PC-screens makes it even worse. For this reason one central PC that controls that controls the pthers can make a solution and also creates extra interfaces for sound!
The price of 10 MB networkadapters is much less than the cost of screens and switchboxes. Coax with BNC-connector in between and the old PC's quietly function in a remote corner. Efficient decoding doesn't require a fast processor. A hamcom-adapter or ISA-soundcard (keep them!) is more important than the PC.
To connect all the computers and control them you need:
More information can be found at the VNC homepage
Is VNC the only option?
No, but VNC is for free and has a broad support. Other software like pcANYWHERE of Symantec isn't. pcANYWHERE is stronger in compressed relay of images.
Sound
A bandwidth of 10 MBit/s is sufficient for transmission of sound through the network. Sound for radio-amateurs is speech over one channel. A look at the datarate for .WAV files in the soundrecorder shows an minimal rate of 7 kB/s. That's less than 1% of the bandwith in your network! Even a serial cable would be more than sufficient in this case.
The 10MBit/s is not the effective bandwith. Since the packets also return it is likelier to be halve, so about 5 MBit/s.
The nice thing about sound in a computer is the easy way to record, wind and rewind. The Windows stuff is not well suited for editing.
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Laatst changed: 14 dec 2000
© 2000 Jan, pe1rym