DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS: PC LAPTOP
Background:
May 2026 - The Club seemed to need a separate computer to enable Digital Communications on the Yeasu FTDX101D tranciever.
The UW's requirement for shared sign-in computers on the network restricting installation of software required a solution that was a computer not using UW IT resources. The solution was a Chromebook running Linux OS with OS Verification disabled. This allowed the Chromebook to operate off-line. The Chromebook was donated to the club by wb9yzu. It has one fault; the battery is bad which shouldn't affect station operation in the shack.
Update:
07/02/26 I had the idea of replacing the Chromebook with a PC Laptop because I believed there was more variety of HAM programs for the PC. However, the USB ports were having trouble finding the Yeasu and the Chromebook had no issue with the USB port discovery/selection.
Also, after performing a "sudo apt update" and performing a "apt search" for different things, I found there are a lot of Amateur Radio related programs out there for LINUX based computers. At this point the Chromebook is functioning well for what we're using it for.