Scott: Earlier this year you send me a FC-301/D Mini-DIN + Power Cable for use with the FC-301. Back in June I was configuring a couple of OT2m/FC301 combinations (not T2-301's as I wanted to use the LCD capability) as digipeaters for the Banff Jasper relay and used this cable along with a homemade one. I discovered that your cable actually had the DIN 1200 "data out" pin connected to pin 9 (spkr) on the FC-301 DB-9 connector rather than the expected pin 2 (Data out). I used a standard DIN packet cable to connect to the OT2m. For my homemade cable I had used pin 2 and it seemed to work fine except that the output was not squelched as expected and I had to use the software DCD mode on the OT2m for it to work properly (however I may have neglected to check off the "external squelch" box in config!) As the FC-301 with the DIN cable did not seem to be working I ended up jumpering the daughter board to lead the "Data out" on pin 2 to pin 9 instead. It then worked but with the same characteristics as my own cable. I suspected that the speaker output was not high enough to drive the OT2m and as I was in a rush I was not able to program the FC-301 output level properly.
>From this I have a few questions: 1. Should the DIN cable have been wired to connect to pin 2 of the FC-301 or was pin 9 intended? 2. Could it be that the cable was intended for the FC-301 in 9600 baud operation, in which case its pin 2 is connected to the correct pin on the DIN? 2. It would also appear that the so called "Data out" signal of the FC-301 is unsquelched. Therefore it is not strictly comparable to other radios which have the data out squelched. One needs to make sure the squelch control signal gets into the OT2m and that the "external squelch" box is ticked. Is that correct? 3. Which leads me to guess that using pin 9 (which is squelched) may have been a work-around. The only problems are that is tedious to set the output level, and the signal may be emphasized. So is that any different than using the speaker output of an old handheld? Apologies for the long winded explanation but I am trying to clear up some issues as to why my digipeaters did not always beacon properly during the relay race. One was possible interference due to the LCD ribbon cable which I already seemed to have cleared up. Also others may have similar cable issues. Graham VE6GW
