Yaesu FTDX-1200 Woes

Hello! Every few months I spend a few fruitless hours trying to get my Yaesu FTDX-1200 working. I’m hoping someone can help me out.

My setup: WSJT-X on Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS, Digirig Mobile that I soldered the pads for RS232 operation, and the Kenwood TS-480 Digirig Cable Set.

What I see happening: I can play around with the settings enough to affect the radio in the sense that when I click “Test CAT” I can get my radio to fall silent and engage a relay (a mechanical click is heard). Here’s one configuration that can make this happen:

However, I then get this error and nothing happens:

There’s one small good piece of news, though; it seems as though my wide graph is working.

I’ve messed around with a lot of the settings, having cobbled together various instructions for similar but not identical setups I’ve seen online. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. Please treat me like an idiot–if you leave out some simple step you think everyone would know, I might not know it.

Thanks and 73

Try approaching the troubleshooting by isolating the concerns.

  1. See if the same issue exists on windows. If the problem follows the interface then it’s not related to your Linux system.
  2. Try loopback test on the serial port to confirm Digirig and cable work as they should. If they do then focus shift to the radio
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Thanks for getting back to me.

  1. I don’t really know anyone who still has a Windows machine, so I might not be able to do that test, but a friend is lending me their Mac to try it on.
  2. I’m a little uncertain about the results of the loopback test. I was able to get the input to echo, but there seems to be a bunch of garbled nonsense as well. I’m not sure if that’s because I have to use a non-PuTTY terminal, but here’s what I see when I type “test”:
    . It doesn’t echo when I haven’t bridged pins 2 & 3, but does still throw the garbage in there as well.

Do you or anyone else have a verified set of working settings for this rig combination? Thanks again.

Can you share a high resolution photo of your RS-232 mod on the back of the PCB?

This is the best I can do:

Probing with a multimeter, if we label the pads like

RS232
0 1 2
3 4 5
6 7 8
CMOS

I can confirm a solid connection between [0,3], [1,4], and [2,5], but not between any of the unsoldered pads and each other or with the soldered pads, nor between two adjacent pads (i.e. [0,3] is not connected to [1,4], and [1,4] is not connected to [2,5]).

Things look a bit muddy between the soldered pads, but if your continuity test shows no connection then that should be fine.

Does the garbage show continuously or only when you type?
Is this the case when the serial cable is not plugged into Digirig?

try setting handshake to NONE and PTT set to VOX or CAT for a quick test.
i’d set to vox to ‘disable’ ptt and just try getting CAT to work, not to actually use vox for transmitting.

the hamlib error is reminiscent of a speed or RTS/DTR mismatch.
(commands getting clipped)

good luck
kb0wlf

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The garbage happens pretty continuously, though sometimes it stops for long periods of time. It does appear even when the serial cable is not plugged in. See this video for an example.

Garbage in the port with nothing connected is not a healthy indicator (as long as you are certain you are tapping the correct port). See if scraping the gaps between the pads clear makes any effect. If not the interface may need to be replaced/repaired.

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I’m not sure what you meant by

but I gave the rest a try and still got the same rig failure error. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

I scraped down the pad gaps, retested, re-soldered and re-tested (multimeter first, then tested cat control again) to no avail. Still garbage in the port.

My turn to play with it. RMA is in PM.

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i see you’ve got an rma going but i’ll try to clear up my comment
:slight_smile:
i meant, let’s try getting CAT isolated from PTT to start with.

so when trying to get CAT frequency/band/mode changes, there would be no interaction with the PTT functions. either RTS or CAT command which share the comm port.

sorry 'bout that. i end up typing shorthand from my longhand ‘ideas’.
:wink:

good luck
kb0wlf

K0TX, thanks for the great service.

KB0WLF, thanks for the further explanation. It may help someone else reading this thread in the future.

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