The REAL Longwire

[USAPatriot]

Just a short story before bed...no real reason for it other than to kill a few minutes:

Back in the early 90's I guess, I had me an ISA Winradio card. Damn I loved that thing. I dumped it after ISA slots went the way of a passenger pigeon, but that's another story. Anyhow, the antenna I used was a longwire with a monster balun. I don't recall the specs and don't recall how I arrived at the length of the wire offhand, but it wound up to be 320 feet...it started out up above my rear door at the balun, crossed about 25 feet to the driveway fenceline, shot down 100+ feet to the telephone pole, went west over the greenhouse to the next phone pole, came back down the opposite fenceline then traveled east back to near the balun. .5khz - 1.3Ghz (if I recall) - a lot of ground to cover
I sure wish I had it back since from what I gather there's a few ISA slotted motherboards being made again.

Of course, if ya'll wanna chip in and send me a PCI slotted Winradio, I promise to remember you in my will... GRIN. j/k -Rod-

 

[flyingwolf]

There are PCI to ISA adapters

Do a google search for just that.

 

[USAPatriot]

There are PCI to ISA adapters

Do a google search for just that.

It seems to me that I did that a few years back. They were neither plentiful or cheap. I almost bought a new PCI model last year but chickened out the day before they shipped as I'd mistakenly ordered the cellular enabled model
Their WR1000 is a hell of an ear. -Rod-

 

[BaLa]

if you look around you will be able to come up with an old mobo that has an ISA Slot or two, if you buy whatever else you need for it. you'd have a dedicated machine for it.



and you can definitely beat $500 (that's how much the PCI Version goes for on their site)

just threw something together on Newegg for $237 without shipping
no OS, Keyboard, Mouse and Monitor

that is all assuming you still have the old ISA Card and you know enough about PCs to be able to build one..

 

[USAPatriot]

No, the card is long gone...had to sell it for food during my divorce. Bummer.

I can quite easily build most any system...it's just a question of not having any cash. This one I'm on now is a 3.2Ghz P4HT, ABIT IC7-G, with a gig of PC3200, 80gig HDD, ATI 9600, CDRW/DVDRW +/-, 7-in1 card reader, Lian Li PC61 case and probably a few other things. Ah, Win XP Pro and Linksys Wireless-G. I built it in January while I still had the $$'s - and before the ex got ahold of the rest.

All I need is a card. -Rod-

 

[MacombMonitor]

For WiNRADiO claiming itself to be such a "State Of The Art" radio manufacture, I don't understand why they continue to manufacture such anaquated, obsolete hardware, such as it's devices still using the ISA bus! They admit it is obsolete, as their newer HF cards are PCI bus, so why don't they redesign their VHF/UHF cards for PCI bus?

However, as someone else mentioned, there are tons of older computers on the market, especially on eBay, that still have at least a couple ISA slots available, and are plenty fast enough to run any of the WiNRADiO software that's currently available.

I owned a WiNRADiO 1500E, and it was no comparison to the Icom PCR-1000. Icom blew it away, and it had HF in addition to VHF/UHF in the same device, for less money!

 

[USAPatriot]

I think you sorta answered your own question. It's amazing how many people streadfastly hold on to the older technology...and I CAN see the point to some extent. My 3.2 Ghz HT machines pump out so much heat that I simply don't use them on days like this when the temps are going to hit 105+. A/C or not, the machine will keep this room in the 80's. An old beat up 500Mhz machine with it's ISA slot doesn't have such problems and it's heat output is minimal. I'd guess that Winradio is probably just listing excess stock. No sense in tossing them in the garbage, right?

For all my hi tech gear, it's useless in this heat if I can't run it. And my SETI workunits don't get processed -Rod-