After blowing two evenings trying to get SDR working, I\u2019m beginning to think I was correct in basically writing the technology off as not worth the trouble some years ago. I fight with computers in my day job. I don\u2019t want to do it as a hobby.<\/p>\n
First, I use Macs. If you use a Mac, you\u2019re really<\/em> left out. The vast majority of SDR software supports Windows and Windows only. The few exceptions tend to run on Linux and not Macs.<\/p>\n Sure, I could boot Linux on my Mac, but it\u2019s Linux. That means it was written by hard-core geeks for hard-core geeks, so documentation is incomplete (if available at all). To prove my point, I tried to create a bootable Linux flash drive last night, following all the instructions meticulously. It didn\u2019t work; it failed to even appear as a boot device when the system came up. That means there\u2019s probably some missing step in the by-geeks, for-geeks instructions that was left out because it\u2019s transparently obvious\u2026 obvious to a hard-core Linux geek that is. Figuring out the answer to that puzzle could easily involve me blowing my free time on it for the next several weeks. No thanks. I want to geek around with radio, not Linux systems administrivia.<\/p>\n The few exceptions, i.e. SDR programs that run on the Mac natively, tend to involve Mac Ports. Which is (link) currently broken. Sigh.<\/p>\n That leaves running Windows, which probably means buying and setting up a whole new computer. If it comes to that, there goes any cost advantage of SDR; even a sub-$10 dongle like the one working its way to me from Singapore will have a total cost about twice that of the Alinco receiver I just purchased. It actually might<\/em> come to ruunning Windows\u2026 eventually. Right now, there\u2019s higher priorities for spending that sort of cash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After blowing two evenings trying to get SDR working, I\u2019m beginning to think I was correct in basically writing the technology off as not worth the trouble some years ago. I fight with computers in my day job. I don\u2019t want to do it as a hobby. First, I use Macs. If you use a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","category-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}