Episode: 2062
Title: HPR2062: Now The Chips Are Definitely Down
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2062/hpr2062.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 13:53:12

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This in HPR episode 2062 entitled, Outer Chips Are Definitely Mounted, it is hosted by MrX
and in about 41 minutes long.
The summer is show about an interesting documentary I recently came across and new piece on hardware.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by An Honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15, that's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at An Honesthost.com.
Hello and welcome Hacker Public Radio Audience.
Today I'm going to talk to you about a new piece of equipment that I bought recently.
Also about a documentary which I thought was very thoughtful of walking, probably explains
why I bought this piece of equipment in the first place.
But before I get on to that, I'd like to thank the people at HPR for making this service possible.
It's very easy to do, just pick up a microphone and hit the record button in a way you go.
Actually the hardest part I find is filling in the show notes.
It's a bit kind of a bit of a bother doing.
At the end of the day, even if you just record something and don't do much of the show notes, that's fine.
It's just getting something out there.
Everyone was to contribute one thing a year.
There may be masses to go around.
So, why don't you pick up a microphone and give it a go.
So, this is my 11th HPR podcast.
I did one back in February 2016.
This wasn't the one I was planning to do, but we were getting a bit short on the shows.
You may have noticed.
So, this episode's going to be a bit off the cuff.
These days I don't have the same time I used to have.
So, it's usually just mainly off the cuff.
I don't really get a chance to write much notes up and really think very carefully about what I'm going to say.
So, if I've got lots of on-the-stars and all sorts of things like that, I apologise.
It's just getting issues out of that matter.
So, anyway, the documentary I saw was called Now The Chips Are Down.
That was a title and it was a BBC Horizon documentary.
So, the BBC, I've got an iPlayer app that you can stream content.
The BBC select archive footage.
There's an archive section where they select footage that you think the public will be particularly interested in.
And this one was chosen.
I think it was originally broadcasted in 1977.
I think it was something like that. I'm not not sure.
Anyway, they talk about the growth of the Silicon chip industry and the implications that will have on society.
They were saying that you may be aware that William Shockley invented the transistor.
I don't know what the year was.
So, from what I gather, William Shockley and seven other people set up a business.
I think it may have been called, again, the software memory, National Semiconductors.
And National Semiconductors, William Shockley was a very difficult person to work for.
And, in fact, at one point, some of us had a lot of controversy around them.
I think I seem to remember hearing at some point that he had very strong views on him.
He was suggesting that if you weren't clever enough for a light kind of person,
then you should be sterilised so that only the clever people will inherit the earth, so to speak.
Of course, I was fairly controversial. But anyway, it was almost impossible to work with.
And so much so that these seven people that worked with him, one by one, left and started their own company.
And each one of these companies was hugely successful.
And this is the basis of how Silicon Valley was cumulative existence.
But the other fascinating thing about it was we were talking about how chips are made and such like.
They were, they said in a very small number of years, the number of chips doubled and doubled and doubled again,
so they would become four tons of stars on a chip.
So, a tons of stars is just like a solar state device, which can switch signals very fast,
like a switch, or it can be used as an amplifier. But anyway, if you package enough of these,
these transistors together, you can make microprocessors and also a complex chips and such like.
But anyway, they were saying that it went from 4 to 8 to 16, 32.
And I think at that point they were up to 250 odd thousand transistors on a chip.
And that was, that was, I see, back in 77.
But the thing was that the, so what happens is they take a photographic image of the circuit they want and they shrink it down and put it onto a silicon, a slice of silicon.
And this slice of silicon is a, when you look at it, I don't know, it looked, looked to me like it was, I don't know, I don't know.
I mean, I don't know, half a meter in diameter, I don't know how many squares were on this slice of silicon.
But each square was a chip.
And so, to get to that final process, they had to go through many, many stages.
It was a very, very difficult process.
And once they had the, the, the, the, the disks of silicon, the patterns are, you put it on a machine that we would connect context to each chip and run a series of tests to see if the chip was, end up being successful or not.
And it was, I don't know if it was like, I think it was, we could test two chips a second
or something like that.
And so as it was moving along, any time it failed, a wee red blob was printed onto the,
the squid of silicon to show that it was, that it failed.
So as it was going along, you know, it was, you know, it was going, you know, chip one,
two, three, four.
And so as it was moving along, it was, it was this sort of thing.
It was like, fail, fail, fail, fail, pass, fail, pass, pass, fail, fail, fail, fail.
It was like huge proportion of fails.
And so only a, so the record about 25% were a success.
And if it was 25%, then they, they thought that was a pretty good yield, you know, pretty, pretty, pretty good.
I don't know what the current status is, but before, sorry, before they went, they actually made these,
these chips, they would, they had a, I think, a vast piece of, I don't know, like melniks, a piece of material
that they would check by hand with an eyeglass, but, even though it was shrunken down dramatically,
it was still a vast, vast sheet.
So it shows you the complexity and the difficulty of making these things back in 77.
And it's so much so that they had extremely clean room conditions, you know, a single bit of dirt or something,
we just destroyed the whole process.
And there was cases where factories would start to produce nothing but fails.
And for, you know, I were after I were day after day, fail, fail, fail, fail.
And then the company would go bankrupt.
So one way around that was to split the process into smaller chunks.
So the only part of the process would fail, not the whole thing.
But the whole thing was unbelievably elaborate and very difficult.
And the thing is that most people today just take technology for granted.
Even the simplest to go off, calculate as a cost of 50 pounds, and I show up or something like that,
is immensely complex.
And people never give it a second thought.
So if you think the complexity seems unbelievable back in 1977,
what sort of complexity do modern chips have?
I don't know what the transistor count is for a modern type chip, but it must be vast, vast.
Now the whole premise of the documentary was saying that, you know, these chips are coming
and they would have massive implications for society.
They were talking about the fact that the Swiss clock industry, they laughed when, you
know, the digital watch, it came into existence.
And how it would never replace a, you know, a properly precision manufacturer, the time
piece.
But of course, they, you know, few years later they were, you know, a shadow of their own
former self, so many employees lost their job.
And I think I remember hearing somewhere that, I think, I think I saw on the secret life
of machines, they showed that the most advanced mechanical watch in the world, they had it
on show and they were showing that typically it's 10 times less reliable, it's a 10 times
less accurate, I should say, than, you know, a cheap digital watch, because they showed
that, they compared it using a meter to, to compare the accuracies, that's, of course,
it's, you're talking, you know, 50 pains for the watch, something like that.
So it's quite astonishing, really.
And then they're talking about, you know, the cash register, say, the cash register,
and just see that was massive and I went down the pan, they're talking about automated
warehouses, and they showed the, a fully automated warehouse loading, it was actually
a personal, personal washing powder, and, among other things, into this, this automated
warehouse, I think, if I'm most warehouses are stocked that way nowadays, I don't know
for definite, but I imagine it is, what would happen if, if, let's say, satellites were
knocked out through an electromagnetic storm, or something, something took to, to, to
have internet by must, you know, something happened, how would you unload these things
from the warehouse, it just, people wouldn't know when anything is, how to do anything
if, if, if the computer infrastructure collapsed or whatever, you know, and they're talking
about, um, Tills, they were, they're showing a tell that, that, that, it didn't just, it
wasn't just a standard tell, it could actually transfer money from your bank account to the,
the company's bank account, and, uh, they, they showed them using a card, but it, it
was so early, they didn't have a card, it was such, you put the card, and I think the,
the operator punched in the, in the numbers, um, but it started, it contacted the banks
and transferred the money, which, of course, back then, must have seemed like, seemed
like magic, and, uh, but the scene had a, a, a, a more sinister side, because, all the
tell operators, it recorded how fast they worked, and on top of that, how many mistakes
they made, um, sure that, say, should all these tell us, do that sort of thing now, uh,
they're also talking about automated self-driving tractors, uh, would they plow the field, uh,
automatically, now I don't know if these things actually came into existence, but I do
know a farmer friend of mine, uh, told me that, um, after his tractors used GPS, uh, locating
and they know, uh, in the field, where the crops haven't done so well, so the tractor
puts down more feed, and likewise, where the crops are really good, it puts down less
feed, so, uh, all kind of computer controlled, uh, with a minimal input from the operator,
and I think a few years back, no, that long ago, there was hundreds of people working
in the fields, uh, but nowadays, you know, you only wanted to farm, one or two farm workers
and they can work the whole plot, um, they also showed, um, an expert system where they
had a senior doctor who had spent a number of years, um, trying to, um, capture these,
his expert expertise knowledge, him and I see some other experts capturing their expertise
so that junior doctors could do the rounds and had all the expertise of the, um, senior
doctor and in fact, could come up with a more accurate, um, prognosis and, uh, quicker
than in fact, the, the, the, the senior doctor could in fact, so it was actually a better
service.
I don't know how routinely that's, that's used just now.
Remember all this was a production in 1977, um, they also mentioned about a new device
called the World Processor and, uh, in the marvel that how sexist of a document could
be called up, uh, click on a button, um, and that how sections, uh, you know, so I suppose
if you had like legal documents, you could, um, you could pull them together very quickly,
uh, with, with template to paragraphs and such like, uh, and they said that the biggest
delay in creating documents, typing was fixing errors, um, and the reckon that a World
Processor could replace seven typists, uh, when's the last thing we saw typists these
days, um, and at the end of the, the, the program, they had a panel of three experts and
they were asking implications about what they thought it would hold for society, um, will
that, you know, asking questions such as, will there be good unemployment, uh, will we
have a divided hold out society, uh, between the elites and everyone else with no middle
class? A man on the panel suggested that Britain was already used behind, um, and stated
that America and Germany, for example, helped their companies transition to the new digital
age. They gave examples of, uh, like mechanical cash register, uh, companies, um, and, and
they gave them money to, to, to become digital, you know, I guess ultimately that still,
um, I'm sure some of these companies were still affected and hard to some extent, and,
and America and Germany, but, um, we just had to all go, of course, um, but the reason I'm,
I just thought it was, it was fascinating because so, so much of what they predicted, um,
seemed, seems to have come true, you know, and, uh, and I keep saying that, you know, we
shouldn't worry about technology, we should embrace it. It seems to me that, um, that, uh,
that you end up with more and more people, with fewer and fewer people working hard on harder
to, uh, to serve, uh, the, the elites at the top, um, it seems to, to, to, to me that the, um,
the, the difference between the, um, the rich and the poor is, is, is massively greater than
any other time, and getting worse, uh, you know, as we progress. But, um, just to, to say where that,
this is going to lead to is, is, is, uh, related to the, the item, which I just purchased recently.
Now, the reason I bought this new piece of equipment is because, as a title of the documentary,
it was called, the chips are down, down in price. All will be revealed shortly.
I am, uh, a, a, an amateur radio, uh, operator, uh, and my call sign is, uh, GM for MRX. No,
I'm only joking. Uh, it's not GM for MRX. I'm not going to tell you what my call sign is,
because I'm Mr X. But I am a, an amateur radio operator, um, and, um, one of the amateur bands
I can transmit on is a two meter band. And that's, you know, I think it's a hundred, it's 144 megahertz
to 146 megahertz. And, um, I, I had a, a handset, uh, a portable handset, a standard handset, um,
which I'll just go and get hold of a second. I forgot to bring it through.
You're right. Okay. Okay. It's, um, okay. Sorry about that noise. Uh,
so it's a standard, uh, C510A, amateur handset, uh, dual band. And, um, I don't know how old it is,
it's, it's quite a few years old. But, um, at the time, it was a, a real bargain. And, uh, it was,
a friend of mine bought one and you know what, you've got to get one of these standard handsets,
are fantastic, great value and credible. Anyway, amateur, uh, equipment tends to be very expensive
or used to be, um, it's allowed to, to some extent. And so he, he got a standard C510E, which is the
European version. Uh, this is an American version. Uh, the difference being that the, uh, repeater
offsets are different. So on 70 centimeters. So I've got, uh, that's, that's the 430 megahertz band.
And, uh, so these have to be said manually, a bit more, a bit more, a bit more fairly big can still be
done. Um, but it was all that was available at the time, because I was a bit slow at getting, uh,
bang the radio when I got all the other European wins were gone. Um, but I've still got the
standard, uh, C510E handset. And it, I think it cost 120 pounds, something like that.
So 120 pounds, maybe see 10 years ago, I don't, I don't know how to find about this thing.
But, uh, 120 pounds, and I thought that was a bargain. I really thought that's a great deal.
Now, I've, in recent years, I haven't used, uh, malmatch radio equipment very much, uh, but, um,
I don't have so much time as I used to have these days. Uh, and I'm not on the, uh, the computer
very much sees these either. Um, so, so of course, there's an excuse, if I can manage to squeeze
time into the cortisol, so can you, but anyway, uh, I digress. So, um, that was that. And I thought
to myself, oh, it would be quite nice when I'm out about, if I took my handset with me, I could
use it, but I thought, ah, it's such a nice wee handset. I really like it. I don't want it to get
damaged. Uh, and it kind of put me off. And I thought, I wonder how much handsets cost these days.
So, how do we look on, uh, eBay? I think it was eBay. And I was absolutely flabbergasted
to see that there was a radio, um, now, uh, both, both, I might, oh, when I pronounce this wrong,
and I do apologise, um, to the, the, but it's, it's, I think it's B-A, it's called, it's spelled B-A-O-F-E-N-G-F-E-N-G.
As it, both thing, I don't know. Anyway, it's a both thing U-V-5-R. And this radio was, was
unbelievably 20 pounds, 20 UK pounds. I don't know what that is in, in dollars, but pretty damn cheap.
So, from 120 pounds, um, 10 years or so ago, to 20 pounds today. And, uh, when I first looked
sort of thought, that's that, that bit of rubbish, you know. And in fact, I was talking to a
amateur, using my hands, it, and, um, and, and mentioned the both thing thing. And I saw, yeah, I saw
those, but I thought they were awfully cheap. You couldn't, it can't have been much good. And,
of course, the amateur was saying, oh, yeah, well, actually, that's what I've got. It's, like,
I said, rather dignity, and it's great. Uh, nothing wrong with it. Oh, right. Sorry.
So, I looked at some of the reviews and found it. They got pretty good reviews, really. So, um,
I, uh, went ahead and purchased one. And it's, it's, it's, it's qualities. Unbelievable. It's,
it's really solid. Um, it, I mean, it, it's a little bit more basic and some respects compared to
the standard. My standards got quite complex, quite, quite advanced, um, memory channel, uh, options
and such like, uh, which the both thing doesn't have. But, uh, and the both thing really is design
for, um, uh, commercial use. It's kind of pressed into amateur use. It can be so used by taxi
firms, I guess, and marine, uh, you know, for marine use, you know, ship, ship to shore or whatever.
Um, but because of the, the band of frequencies it can receive in transmittal, it can also be used
on amateur, both on two meter band, which is, I've told you before, it's one four four, two
one four six. And seventy centimeters are in 430 megahertz. And, uh, so it's not, it's not
fully duplex. It's just, same with duplex. So you can only transmit and receive one, one
frequency at a time. But, uh, but my standard one is, that's the same, of course. But it's just,
just absolutely, I can't, I can't get my head on 20 pounds. Unbelievable. It comes with, uh,
it comes with a, it's a lithium ion battery, and it can be dropped into a charge, a docking charger,
like a, like a proper, professional handset. Likewise, you can have a battery charging on its own
while you're using the radio, if you've got a spare battery. And it came with a
covert microphone and earpiece, which is great. Um, and, uh, all this for 20 pounds, just, just
mind blowing, they could make it for, for a total money. Um, you're looking at the complexity,
it's just astonishing. So, um, and of course, the best thing of all is when you turn it on,
it speaks to you, channel mode, that's it. If you couldn't understand it,
frequency mode, yeah, frequency mode, fantastic. Really, really good, unbelievable. So, um,
let's see, when you look at the, uh, let's see what, what do the menus have, is it's got,
it's got 40, 40 menus on it on the thing. So, you can adjust a squelch level, you can adjust the,
the steps between each frequency when you're changing the channel, just the transmit power,
uh, you've got battery save function, which I just, what happens is the, the receiver goes into
sleep mode every so many seconds, uh, if it's just sitting monitoring a frequency, and by that
way, it saves battery power, so it'll, it'll, and by the way, the battery, the battery, um, performance
is just unbelievable. It goes for hours and hours and hours, way way longer than the standard
time set. I've got, um, vox, voice up into control, so if you turn that on, you can, you can just
hold the microphone up your mouse, mouse, and when it senses above a certain volume, it keys
to transmitter, and then when you stop after so many seconds, it releases the transmitter. So,
you don't have to push any buttons. Uh, you've got a wide band and narrow band setting,
which changes, uh, how wide the FM deviation is when you, when you speak into the, um,
into the, uh, handset, um, display illumination time, so that's, that's how long the
display stays on, um, when you, you know, when you play with the radio, um, dual watch allows you
to monitor two frequency simultaneously, so it starts switching between two, um, two frequencies,
um, key beep, uh, so whether it beeps and you hit a key or not, or transmit timeout, so that's,
that allows you to, to, um, if you hope, if you transmit too long, it'll, it'll timeout,
it saves the batteries. If you're going through amateur repeater station, uh, then if you transmit
for too long, then the repeater, other end might drop your signal because you're spending too long,
on the one channel, and then other people can't get a chance to use the repeater.
So, uh, plus also, I think if you're on high power on this thing, it turns to get very hot,
and we also protects the, the, um, the, the output transistors on the radio, uh, DCS,
a digital code squelch, that's, uh, a kind of filtering system, um, CTCSS,
it kind of, kind of continues tone carrier signals out of standard camera, but it's, it's
another filtering system, uh, DCS transmit, that's, that sets a code that you transmit for the
filtering system, uh, CTCSS, CTCSS transmit, and I can, that's for your filtering.
A voice prompt, um, I don't know what, like, I guess, I think you have got off on English in
Chinese or something like that, 15 automated numbering ID, I don't know what that is, 16DTMF
tones when you transmit, 17S code, signal code code, you know what the hell that is, 18 scanner
resume method, so you've got different ways of, when you're, when you're scanning, when you're
radio is scanning, and I'll let you hear scanning, scanning begin, scanning begin, I'll just stop
that, scanning, oh, scanning stop, so when it's scanning, when you're scanning the frequencies,
you can set it so that when it comes across a signal, it pauses for so long and then continues,
that's one to type of, uh, one option, the other option is carrier, so it stops and it comes up
to a signal, uh, but when the signal stops, it resumes scanning again, and there's a third
option, which is called the CERT option, and so when it finds a signal, uh, the scanning stops,
it stays on that frequency, so that's three options, very handy. I don't know if my standards got all
these options for this, for, for scanning resume, um, oh, I went to send PTTID, uh, beginning
ender both, uh, that's 1920s, signal code, ending delay, um, 21 is channel mode A display,
to channel mode B display, it's got two, two dual displays, although, and it makes it look like
it's a radio that can receive two frequencies simultaneously or transmit, but as I said before,
it can't. I guess it's just a convenient way of switching between two set frequencies,
uh, quickly, you know, bids you channel lockout, so what that does is if, if the radio is receiving
a signal, it won't allow you to transmit quite handy subject transmitting over the top of someday,
whatever the key part lock, very handy, uh, frequency to shift direction, uh, say,
that's so the frequency changes when you, when you key the, the transmitter,
and that's generally used for working through repeater stations, uh, that's the frequency shift you
want to, uh, shift when you transmit, so for example here in the UK when you, uh, when you go
through a two meter repeater station, it drops transmit frequency by, um, 600 kilohertz,
so for example if you're transmitting on, say, 145, 600, so if you're listening on 145, 600,
when you push the transmit button, it drops to 145, 000, um, and then the, so the repeater listens
on 145, 000, and the retracement is back out on 145, 600, so other stations can hear your
broadcast, that's essentially how a repeater works, and of course that'll be off behind the
hill, so it's got a, you know, a large range, um, and obviously more, uh, more power on the handset
we'd have, 27, still in memory channel, 28, delete in memory channel that's stuff evident, um, 29
display backlight standby, 30 display backlight receive, 31, uh, display backlight transmit,
and you've got three colors, but it's, it's, um, is it kind of purpley, bluey, green,
something like that, I can't remember, but it's, it's quite funky, the way it switches between all
the different colors, um, alarm mode, then there's a red button, an orange button on the side, and
if you hold it, it does something to send some sort of signal on a preset frequency, so I guess
ideas if you were a security guard, and you were being attacked, you could hit this orange button,
and it would, it would send off a signal to who was listening, being that I'm an amateur,
there's not much point in that, another curious thing is got, is, um, is got a light on the top of it,
so if you touch a button, that is, this LED comes on, and I guess you're wondering right now,
I'm a building site or something that was dark, you could pop light on for to see if we were going,
or it's actually very, very handy, um, and it's also got a, a built-in, uh, radio,
so if you're a board security guard, you hit this button, and it jumps to the, to a radio,
let's turn that on the now, just, right, so if I hit this, what button is it now, is it on that one?
No, it's just one.
So that's the radio, and if I signal, if I signal appears on the, on the, on, on the, on the,
on the say two meters or whatever, it'll jump off the radio, and then once that goes away,
it'll jump back to the radio again, so you don't miss any, um, any, a broadcast,
so I mean, for a board security guard, that would be fantastic, I'd imagine,
it's quite handy as well too, even for an amateur, um,
and I've got band selection, so that, it's got two bands, a VHF band, and a UHF band,
so the B, the, um, VHF band, I think it's something like a hundred and thirty-six megahertz,
a hundred and seventy odd, something like that, and, uh, the UHF, um, I'm not sure,
what, well that is, I don't have the manual to hand, but,
thirty-four, transmit selection, dual watch mode, not sure what that is,
thirty-five, squelch, tail, elimination, and these ones are to do with, um,
working through a repeater, and to time minimize noises as, as you're switching through the,
the repeater basically, like, uh, hissing and crackling when you release the button,
um, squelch, tail, elimination, squelch, tail, elimination through repeater, delay,
the squelch, tail, off, repeater, um, so these are thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven,
general, I just turn all the, all these off, power on message, so I've got mine such that
when I turn it on, it, it displays my call sign, so, my radio was found, uh, somebody,
with a, uh, somebody who could return it to me, if they should, so chose to do so,
um, thirty-nine, Roger Beep, so that's a bit, kind of, I've found a point in an amateur world,
but, uh, if you wanted to do that, particularly who, I suppose if you're a security guy or whatever,
could be handy, and forty, reset to defaults, and I just reset things, so loads and loads of options
on the thing as you can see, and when I was, um, looking at the radio, I came across, I was looking
at the manufacturer's manual, and, uh, you know, it's obviously, um, a Chinese manual, so,
it's not perfect, but it really isn't bad, um, it's, it's, it's quite understandable and quite
straightforward, but, um, I was looking through, uh, the manual, and I looked at it again later on,
and when I was looking at it, I, um, I was reading this piece, and it was, it was, I can't
remember what it was, it was something like, oh, I, the radio might say it's, uh, it's got, um,
a seven-character display, but you can actually only do, uh, six, and there's, there's,
there's, there's, there's icons on the display that don't seem to be, um, active on this, you
don't, I'm thinking, that's a strange phrase for the manufacturers to say, and I'll talk to you
further at it, I discovered I hadn't opened the same file as I did before, this one wasn't the
manufacturer's manual, this was, uh, a completely different manual, it was part of the, the Chinese
radio documentation project, and the fact, the reason I was, I mean, the quality is just superb,
there's lots of extra information that the, the original manufacturer didn't put in, but the
reason I got, they didn't realise was, there's got the, you know, elaborate line drawings that
shown great detail, um, the layout of the radio and all its buttons and switches and knobs and
such like, but it was, uh, such great detail that I never thought for a minute that it was, um,
anything other than the manufacturer, and it turns out that, uh, the, uh, pictures were drawn
on inkscape, of all things, and so this, this, uh, the Chinese radio documentation project,
it's an open source project, um, and that this manual was written by, now, I, I'm going to murder
this, uh, name, Leonard Lidberg, L-E-N-N-A-R-T, uh, L-I-D-B-E-R-G, so, uh, well done,
Leonard, I was, uh, very, very good manual, very impressed, so, just incredible, so, um,
another nice thing about this video is that you can hook up to, uh, to a computer and this,
you know, set, send settings and memory check, many, memories and whatnot from your computer
into the radio, and you can also clone one handset on to another handset, so, uh, that's quite
nice, and, of course, it came with a wee disk, uh, no, it didn't come with a disk, but the interface
cable separately, and it came with a wee disk, and, uh, of course, all the software runs on windows,
and I came across this, uh, um, program called CHURP, CH-I-R-P, and, uh, CHURP is also an open
source, uh, project, uh, and CHURP allows you to upload and download sittings, frequencies,
and memory channels to white selection of radios, um, CHURP is available for, I think Linux,
Windows, and, well, it's different Linux, Windows, and I think Apple, CHURP's a very active project,
uh, with constant updates to support more radios and bug fixes, uh, are repositories available,
for Ubuntu users, uh, the site warns that users may experience difficulty getting cheap Chinese
data cables to work, uh, and the counterfeit chips are detected in Windows, um, I don't know
about Apple, and, uh, and so the, the generally don't work, um, Linux, however, ignores this,
and she'd work, no problem, uh, and they say that, if this is all too much hassle for people,
uh, they've also got a live distro set up, just ready to go, uh, for users who can't be bothered,
um, so it's just, just incredible, so I installed the, I put the, uh, ripple,
added to my Ubuntu, uh, computer, and, uh, installed CHURP, and, uh, which give, I think,
daily updates to the software, and the chances are that the, the, the CHURP will actually be
better than the software that comes with the radio, for a number of reasons, I didn't try the,
the, the Windows software, so some of the benefits are that, uh, it allows you to transfer memories,
uh, from one minute of manufacturer radio to another, this would almost certainly not be available,
uh, from the manufacturer software, uh, on my particular radio allowed me to set settings
outside the range given on the radio's main menu, so for example, I could set the, the backlight
timer to 25 seconds, I think that the highest you could set it in the map, and the menu was,
was 10 seconds, and I thought to play around with the Squelch range to, to make a bit, a bit,
a bit heavier Squelch than, uh, the, the, the defaults that were there, um, so just a fantastic
piece of, uh, software, it also, um, allows you to, um, the sources where you can pull in frequencies,
a lot of stuff for America, and one of two things for the UK, so you just, you just pick the menu
option, and these frequencies all appear, which you can then just drop in, onto your, um,
screening, and then upload it to your radio, so it's just a lovely bit software, very, very good,
and, uh, I never had any problems getting the, interface cable to work, uh, you do have to make
sure you push it all the way in, and it can be wee bit, stuff sometimes going in, but, um, no,
on the whole, really, really good, and just unbelievably over the moon with it, you know, it's a 20 pound
radio, it, it, it, it feels like a hundred pound radio plus, we're just going to end in another,
another ten years, will these radios cost a, a five, I don't know, or a pound, I don't know,
but, uh, anyway, I hope I haven't, uh, bored you too much, I thought, um, I don't know how many of
your, uh, amateur radio operators out there, um, but I thought even for people who, um, who,
I've got a little interest in, and radio, might like to, to hear this, uh, episode, um, and I hope I
haven't, uh, started in, um, the Nord too much, and I see it was all off the cuff, um, so,
so I think that's about it for this episode, and I hope you enjoyed it, and I keep, oh, so before
I go, just, to let you know, I could be contacted at MrX, as MRX, at, that's AT, HPR,
the at symbol, googlemail.com MrX, at HPR, at googlemail.com, so until next time, thank you,
and goodbye.
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