The biggest problem with Pactor-3 in the U.S. is that it periodicly fuels a desire to elimnate all digital modes with a similar bandwidth as the FCC would never ban a specific product.
73, John KD6OZH ----- Original Message ----- From: Demetre SV1UY To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, January 04, 2008 21:48 UTC Subject: [digitalradio] Re: Licensing of Pactor modes --- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "Jose A. Amador" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > I have attempted to ignore what matters only to those under the FCC > jurisdiction. Seems that this anti-Winlink regurgitation is an > unavoidable evil... > > Going to the facts: Kantronics did not implement memory ARQ for Pactor > in their early KAM's. So, they were inferior to the real stuff, the SCS > Z-80 Pactor Controller. > > PacComm sold a Pactor controller, but they had marginal profits in > general, as they did not offsource the production of their units, as AEA > did. > > Jose, CO2JA > > --- Hi Jose, Going back to the facts I forgot to mention that even if Kantronics and some other makers tried to reverse engineer PACTOR 1 more than 10 years ago, as some seem to support in this list and also claiming at the same time that PACTOR 1 was OPEN (which might have been), they never managed to do it properly. Don't forget that a British software writer (G4BMK) managed to implement PACTOR 1 properly using a terminal unit, not a sound card, and in a DOS computer (I have bought his program BMKmulti and it works as good as SCS's PACTOR 1 implementation). This is probably the reason why SCS decided to keep to themselves PACTOR 2 and 3 and not to license it to anyone, although I am not sure if anyone ever asked for a license of PACTOR 2 and 3 following ther failure to implement PACTOR 1. If the best companies could not implement properly PACTOR 1 can you imagine what a mess they would do with PACTOR 2, never mind 3. So I cannot see why some fellow amateurs complain against SCS keeping their code to themselves. They do not do the same with other software writers. I dare and urge the software writers if they are any good to try and contact SCS and ask if they can implement PACTOR 2 and 3. It would be great if they could offer the efficiency of PACTOR 2 even in a soundcard program, but I think they can't. If SCS is such a bad company and they will not license PACTOR 2 or 3 (and I personally do not blame them for doing so) why can't they try and write an ARQ SOundcard Program that can go as fast as even PACTOR 2? Never mind PACTOR 3, which many people class as a commercial product! At the moment I can only see PSKmail that performs only as good as PACTOR 1, thanks to Per PA0R, which is better than nothing at all. Also I saw lately NBEMS trying to do the same as PSKmail although I like PSKmail much more than NBEMS. Both can be called "The poor man's Winlink2000", but really they leave a lot to be desired as far as speed and good behaviour in bad HF propagation is concerned. 73 de Demetre SV1UY
