Packet Radio, and Viewdata for the 21st century!

A ‘tongue in cheek’ look at combining amateur Packet Radio with viewdata/videotex to provide a tactical digital radio network for the 21st century.

In previous videos I showed how you could connect a 1980s computer to viewdata and bulletin board systems using a modem and the telephone network. During the mid 80s, before the web was invented, this was the primary way to get your ‘on-line fix’. However, if you were a Radio Amateur back in the day you would have most likely used a Packet Radio system to go online instead.

So here is a video that demonstrated this…. but there’s more!

Packet Radio Details

The Node is TSTAR:G6AML-7 and is located in Upper Basildon, Berkshire IO91KL. It uses a Yaesu FT2600M with TinyTrak 4 TNC and LinBPQ running on a Raspberry Pi. The antenna is a Diamond X30.

For the BBC Micro, the Commstar communications ROM was used connected to a PK88 TNC and Yaesu FT2600M. The antenna was an unbranded Diamond X30 clone. The communications settings were 1200 7E1.

The Linus Laptop (intel MacBook Pro) Used the Telstar Viewdata Client connected to the Kenwood TH-D72. The communications settings were 9600 8N1 (Packet Radio communications were at 1200 baud).

Links

https://groups.io/g/HantsBerksPacket/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_...
https://www.bugoutbagbuilder.com/blog...

BBC Micro Setup

The baud rate and parity settings are determined by the TNC computer interface settings. In the case of PK88 with a BBC Micro running Commstar, I used 1200/1200 baud 7E1. This was the case for both Terminal and Prestel modes.

Telstar

Details of Telstar Viewdata Service including the viewdata client software for Windows/MacOS/Linux at https://glasstty.com/telstar

BPQ Configuration to support Telstar.

Add the following line to the Applications section of bpq32.cfg.
APPLICATION 2,TELSTAR,ATTACH 10 GLASSTTY.COM 6503,G6AML-5,TSTARV,0