This Again?

I have twisted and worked my way around this problem for some time now and this probably isn’t the last time that I will revisit this topic. However, my station is evolving and as a result, I’m going to make some notes here and share what I know so that other folks can make use of it. Honestly? It’s more so that I will remember how I got here when I inevitably screw something up and have to back it out.

Why Are We Doing This Again?

My solution for the home setup, was to run Win11 on a stick PC that I could interface with the IC-7100 for Winlink email and Other Stuff. Now, what is Other Stuff? In ham radio, we have an unhealthy relationship to old and busted Windows-Only software. It’s changing slowly, but there are still weird packages that find their way into my hands that I “need” to use for This or That.

With the shift from the barely usable Win10 to the What Is This Nightmare Of Constant Advertising Win11, MS pushed me too far. Every time I touch what used to be the Start Menu, I get an advertisement or some unwanted tidbit of news with a picture of a politician or other pop culture nuisance. On top of that, they’d now like me to have an “AI” that follows me around and trains itself using my hardware?

We’re done here.

CrossOver

I don’t know how the link came to me, but I found my way to WG1V’s site and encountered a very different approach to solving the Winlink/Vara/All That Stuff conundrum.

https://www.wg1v.org/posts/2023-12-27-Winlink-and-Pat-on-M1-Mac

The author simply runs CrossOver on their Mac and all of the stuff works.

Now, back in the day, as a Frothy Linux Zealot, I was a reluctant user of Wine to address some needs I had in my day job. I wrestled with it and made it work. Over time, running VMs to handle this stuff seemed to become the new hotness and I didn’t even think about CrossOver for the Mac. The trouble with a VM is that it’s still a full install of Windows and still antagonistic to my desired mental state. Would CrossOver really do the trick?

In a word: Yes.

Following the instructions at the above link, I got VARA HF and ARDOP up and running on my Mac which is what I attach to my shiny new IC-7300 in my shack. It worked out of the box with no fiddling. Full disclosure: I hadn’t updated brew in some time so that took a minute, but with that done, everything else fell into place.

What about the Other Stuff? Most of the radio software out there that might be used for programming an HT for example, is built on ancient frameworks that happen to run reliably under CrossOver. I even pulled up some piece of software that I used to program my DMR HT and it worked out of the box. That outcome was unexpected, but most welcome.

Now What?

To send Winlink mail, I kick off rigctrl and pat with its HTTP UI from a command line and launch either ARDOP or VARA from CrossOver and send my Winlink mail. This gets me two big wins: No Windows and No Winlink Express. This is called Winning.

I have been noodling with my Surface Go to make sure that I can use the 7300 under my Ubuntu setup as well. I want my two main computing devices to be fully ready to run any rig I’ve got that can do a digital mode. On Ubuntu, it will be ARDOP and pat as well. For me, that’s a well-oiled setup with the IC-705. I need to take a minute to add the IC-7300 to the configuration. No big deal, just 10 minutes or so when I get it.

The outcome of all of this is that I now have a single shack computing device that is my Mac and I can do all of the things that I do in one place. Simplifying things is good. And I’ve even got this little stick PC that I can throw something on for an internal fileserver or something.

The Future

In an ideal world, someone (maybe me someday?) will get ARDOP running on a Mac. ARDOP is under active development again and these are exciting times for that modem. I can’t wait to see where it goes! But for now, I will leverage it in this new ecosystem with CrossOver. It works and that’s what matters.

Final

It’s probably pretty clear that I’m willing to work with all flavors of software in different evironments. I’m not opposed to paying for useful software, though my first stop will always be Free/Open solutions. The sticking point here is that I don’t have a lot of time to mess around with some of this stuff and this approach gets me from A to B rather quickly. Again, Winning.

Thanks for reading along!