Hi, I have a small job for someone if they are interested, possibly paid if that helps. This will be extremely simple for the right person with knowledge in the right fields. Unfortunately, i was only like 8 years old when this technology was around and i think i still had a mac at that age.
The company i work for has a heap of aviation FM band radio transceivers we use for ground to air comms, TFM-138B, they are so old now but still the only viable option on the market and still worth almost $15k a piece. I have to program them manually, which takes 3-4 hours and a further 3-4 hours to double check my work.
The programming software they come with is made for DOS. It is extremely simple but i cannot get it to function on a modern PC and in the isolated town i live in, that has only recently embraced electricity, I cannot get my hands on an old PC easily.
The manufacturer did make a windows programming software made for Win95 but you have to buy the $1000 module, and the company is not interested in buying it. Instead i made the LPT1 cable to specs and am trying to persevere with the DOS software option.
The software it comes with is basically allows you to save all your 120 preset stations on a file then download them to the TFM-138B via a cable from the parrellel port set as LPT1. Our company only uses 1 set of presets ever.
I have the cable, the radio, the PCI-parrellel card, DOSBox, and winXP-32bit but cannot get the signal to pass thru to the radio.
What I want is... if somebody can somehow capture that download signal that goes out through the parrellel port from the DOS software, then allow me to simulate that signal on a modern PC with just a USB-parrellel port or PCI-parrellel port and my cable connected to the radio transceiver. The signal is always the same to program it.
I'm certain this would be fairly simple if you had the right combo of knowledge and hardware, and i have the software here, it arrived on a floppy disk, its so ancient....but yet would make life so much easier.
Snowtar
