[geeks] computer room gallery 8-)

[Rick Hamell]

> Huh? I've seen ham Packet equipment that passed 56K -- could be run
> cross-band (or through duplexers) for full duplex. The WA4DSY modem could
> be pushed to 256K, IIRC, with a few part changes.

	Cool! Is that modem still available? Last I heard it was hard to
come by, as the manufacturer quit making it. Granted, I've not played with
this stuff for 3 years, so is this an area that is getting more attention
again?	

> One of my friends started an ISP locally using some of the first 2.4GHz
> equipment availible. It was actually 900MHz gear with a transverter at the
> feedpoint. $20k per end at the time, (1) E1 wide.

	That's what was nice about our setup. About $2000 total! :) In
97'/'98 we felt that was pretty good for a T-1 setup.

> The above mentioned shot was 14 miles! and went down in only the heaviest
> rain.

	That is the one really nice thing about Packet at the time. As
we're in Oregon, heavy rain is fairly normal. I think we had the power
tweaked up a bit. The reason we went packet in those days was really bad
though.

	US West (now QWest,) has the downtown Portland area. We were in
GTE (now Verizon,) land on the East side going to our bandwidth provider
on the west side which was also GTE, since we couldn't find any reliable
providers in the down town area.

	Every time it rained, our link went down. We ran it perfectly fine
in the summer, but the first rain of the year. Nothing. After 6 months of
dealing with both companines, our ISP, and even the PUC - we put in the
packet setup with no problems. :) We were fairly certain the problem was
in US West land, but their competence level was pretty low in the
area. And since we were essentially a "small" customer... they didn't want
to do anything with us. :(

	Rick