This took a bit longer than I expected it to, but that’s usually the way things work when you don’t know what you’re doing. When it’s done, it works quite well — I’ve got Winlink Express running on my Macbook under High Sierra with wine — no Parallels or VMware Fusion needed!<\/p>\n
Here are the steps…
\n<\/p>\n
brew install wine && brew install winetricks<\/code><\/li>\n- Run the following to set up Wine to use Windows 7 bindings and install .NET 3.5SP1:
\nWINEARCH=win32; export WINEARCH
\nwinetricks dotnet35sp1<\/code>
\nThis is going to take a while, so you might want to go make a cup of coffee. French press is best for this. Don’t go too far, though,
\n because the process has prompts you’ve got to click through.<\/li>\n- Go look at your
\/dev<\/code> directory and find the devices created for your paired radio. They’ll contain your radio’s Bluetooth name, and be prefixed by tty<\/code> and cu<\/code>. For example, mine were \/dev\/tty.TH-D74Handheld-SerialPo<\/code> and \/dev\/cu.TH-D74Handheld-SerialPo<\/code>. You’ll want to make symbolic links between those devices and files in wine’s dosdevices<\/code> folder, like this:
\ncd ~\/.wine\/dosdevices
\nln -s \/dev\/tty.TH-D74Handheld-SerialPo com1
\nln -s \/dev\/cu.TH-D74Handheld-SerialPo com2<\/code>
\nI think<\/em> you only need the cu<\/code> file, actually, but I linked both of them while I was poking around.<\/li>\n- Edit wine’s
system.reg<\/code> file to add your new serial ports. Don’t ask me why this works — this is a bit of cargo-cult programming on my part taken from a few Google searches. With an editor, open ~\/.wine\/system.reg<\/code>, and someplace (I put it at the bottom) add the following:
\n[Hardware\\\\Devicemap\\\\Serialcomm] 1231984861
\n\"Serial0\"=\"COM1\"
\n[Hardware\\\\Devicemap\\\\Serialcomm] 1231984861
\n\"Serial1\"=\"COM2\"<\/code><\/li>\n- Download RMS Express<\/a> and unzip the download so you have the MSI.<\/li>\n
- Run the installer:
\nwine msiexec \/i RMS\\ Express\\ Setup.msi<\/code><\/li>\n<\/li>\n- Run Winlink Express with wine using the command:
\nwine ~\/.wine\/drive_c\/RMS\\ Express\/RMS\\ Express.exe<\/code>
\nWalk through the setup screens as normal. If this is your first time setting up Winlink Express, you’ll need to go to the Winlink site<\/a> and register.<\/li>\n- To test the software, first pick “Telnet Winlink”, click “Open Session”, and in the window that opens, “Start”. Winlink should kick off a connection to a CMS over the internet.<\/li>\n
- To configure the packet radio link using the TH-D74, choose “Packet Winlink” and click “Open Session”. Click “Settings”, choose “KISS” for “Packet TNC Type”, “NORMAL” for the “Packet TNC Model”, and “COM2” for the serial port. Leave the baud rate at 9600 — it shouldn’t matter over a Bluetooth serial connection. Click Update.\n
- Back in the Session window, configure the connection type and destination node as usual. In my case for testing, I have it set to either “Direct” to KF6GPE-10 (which is in the shack upstairs), or “Digipeater” to W6SCF-10 via KF6GPE-10, W6JWS-3.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
That’s it!<\/p>\n
To send and receive your messages, turn on your radio and tune VFO A to your local packet frequency. Next, make sure you’re in KISS TNC mode by pressing [F][5] until you see the “KISS 12” annunciator above VFO A’s display. On Winlink Express in the Session window, click “Start”. If all goes well, Winlink Express will establish a Bluetooth connection to the TNC (You’ll see an annunciator reading “Connected Bluetooth” flash above VFO A, and the radio should key up. After that, it’s just packet radio as usual.<\/p>\n
If you don’t want to use Terminal to start RMS Express, you can also set up an AppleScript script to do so — see David Baumgold’s excellent discussion<\/a>. Start the script editor, click “New Document” and enter the following in the top half of the window that appears:
\ntell application \"Terminal\"
\n do script \"\/usr\/local\/bin\/wine ~\/.wine\/drive_c\/RMS\\\\ Express\/RMS\\\\ Express.exe\"
\nend tell<\/code>
\nNow click “Compile” (the last button, the one with the hammer), to be sure your script is correct. You can also try it by pressing the Run button. When you’re sure it’s correct, save it and choose “Application” as the file format. I saved it as “Winlink Express” in the default location. If you want, you can drag the resulting icon to your dock; after all, it’s an application.<\/p>\nHappy portable packet radio!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This took a bit longer than I expected it to, but that’s usually the way things work when you don’t know what you’re doing. When it’s done, it works quite well — I’ve got Winlink Express running on my Macbook under High Sierra with wine — no Parallels or VMware Fusion needed! Here are the … Continue reading Winlink on Mac OS X with a TH-D74 over Bluetooth…<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hamradio","category-mobile","category-programming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lothlorien.com\/kf6gpe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lothlorien.com\/kf6gpe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lothlorien.com\/kf6gpe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lothlorien.com\/kf6gpe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lothlorien.com\/kf6gpe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=840"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.lothlorien.com\/kf6gpe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":852,"href":"https:\/\/www.lothlorien.com\/kf6gpe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840\/revisions\/852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lothlorien.com\/kf6gpe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lothlorien.com\/kf6gpe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lothlorien.com\/kf6gpe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}