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Reviews For: TAPR TNC-1 aka Heath HD-4040

Category: Packet TNCs & Digital Multi-mode Controllers

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Review Summary For : TAPR TNC-1 aka Heath HD-4040
Reviews: 1MSRP:
Description:
TAPR's first TNC! Available as a kit in the mid 80's.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.tapr.org
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0015
I2JJR Rating: 2004-06-29
My First TNC in 1983-84 Time Owned: more than 12 months.
This happened more than 20 years ago. I and a friend iw2eij were working on our own packet protocol in 1982-83 and testing it on 144 when suddenly came a voice, swiss-german speaking: HB9IZ was asking what for packet.... great surpsise! Happily I could understand swiss German, so we could speak and after that meet us in HB9. He could not transmit on packet-had no authorization from HB9- but he has 2 TAPR TNC beta kits!!! We were on software solution and we did not know at all about TAPR, Vancouver and ax25! HB9IZ became our elmer, and when autorized we had 1st QSO with him, Xmas 1984, and he gave me one TAPR TNC kits. After that I used it for years, of course I had many other tnc / controllers, but this one is still working fine and has a special place in my shack. I still regret it had no further soft enhancement after wa8ded. If you find one, catch it! maybe you'll have qrn with the NOVRAMS, mine is still ok, but who knows. Find the beautiful original doc, and look on the TAPR site for other infos. It was more expensive than TNC2, like Lisa and Mac, the second was an economy version of the former. For your Info, we used a BBC-b (Beeb) Acorn Computer for our own protocol, and a rs232 battery writing machine/terminal with the TAPR TNC at first, then I used a terminal emulation on the BBC-b. We were the first in Italy and among the first in southern Europe. At those time, Packet was really a new era, and the TAPR TNC (later known as TNC1) was the rolls-royce for the hardware solution. I regret those times, but else if I do not use packet anymore (use pactor2&3, and other digimodes on HF, psk31 on vhf)the TNC(1) era is still in my heart.
I2JJR Augusto