Hello – I found a used Alinco DR-135T. Nice little mobile radio and it’s working great with analog. Now I’d like to connect it to Direwolf or equivalent software. At a minimum, I’d like to receive and decode APRS (144.390). What do I need?
I do see the cable for the DR-135T. I assume the DB9 plugs into the back data port and the 3.5 jack plugs into Audio on a digirig mobile?
My radio does not have the TNC plugin (EJ-41U).
Any other hardware I would need?
Thanks - Joel
Yes, you’ll need the transceiver side cable and either Digirig Mobile (any configuration) with USB cable or Digirig Lite.
@K0TX I received the DR-135T cable and Digirig Mobile. Cool, thanks.
As a test, if I connect the cable while the DR-135T is in data mode, and ground the PTT conductor on the 4 conductor audio plug, I should see the radio TX, correct?
I’m using this post Cable for Alinco DR-135T - #12 by Steve_Delaloye as a guide for which conductors to short. I short the S (furthest inside) to the R2 (2nd from inside), and I don’t see the radio TX.
I also tried with a DB9 breakout. No luck. I did get this radio off ebay as a “rescue”, looks like I got a dud?
Analog works great though.
The radio should respond to the simulated PTT.
For sanity check you can try shorting the terminals directly on the radio ruling out any of the Digirig equipment. The fallback option is to use a mic/headphones connection.
I can rule out your cable being the issue, thanks.
is the internal jumper wires present/installed?
there is supposed to be a set of jumper wires connecting the db9 to the radio board.
this is removed when the internal tnc is installed because it uses the connections (obviously)
kb0wlf
Yes, I took the bottom cover off and I can see the wires are connected from the db9 to the small radio board.
Just want to close this thread out: Worked out all the software, hardware variables.
An old yet solid Alinco DR-135T + Digirig cable + Digirig Mobile working great!
sweet!
kb0wlf
Joel,
It’s been so long since I did this and I don’t recall the steps involved.
Digirig Mobile + Direwolf has been solid. I got it to work on 3 devices now, 1) Win11, 2) Debian 13 amd64, 3) Debian 13 RPi3. Once you figure out how to get the audio levels right, it just works. Pretty cool.