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:
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.
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.
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”:
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]).
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)
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.
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.
i see you’ve got an rma going but i’ll try to clear up my comment
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’.
