I have played with Linux a bit from time to time, and I have my old machine
still around here yet. How hard, being totally blind, would it be to turn it
into an IRLP box? Can I use a linux distribution with speakup already in it
to get things going and control things? I still have my first rig, an Icom
mobile 2-meter that had UHF receive also, a speech chip, and up to 50 watts
of power laying around my parents' place not hooked up since they remodeled
the windows and the hole the coax went through wasn't redrilled through the
new windowsill. If I recall correctly, the model had a 7 and an H in it.
What comes to mind is 721h, 781h, or 799h that was recommended about 10
years ago as a good rig for the blind. It, as I remember, had the ability to
be used for Packet but I never had gear to do so, or what that ability in a
rig meant since it has no built-in TNC. Could I likely use it as an IRLP
radio if I hooked it up to a magnetic antenna or something I could use here
indoors? Are cables made from the factory that one could just hook it to the
mic connector and whatever output jack is provided on the rig and the other
end into the interface board, not sure what I'd use for that, whatever is
easiest? The ability to actually operate such a node depends on whether I
could install IRLP on my other system after installing one of the
distributions patched with Speakup. Could this be done, and how have other
blind hams gotten their IRLP nodes going. I would just use other nodes
around, but my reception of them gets quite marginal and the closest one I
can't even receive on my TH-F6A as it is a Simplex node that can run as
little as 5 watts on a low antenna. The one on the repeater I can receive
sometimes, but my transmit audio gets low and maybe masked under static. It
looks like setting up my own small node may be the only solution since I
can't put an antenna on the apartment building, got lucky enough to be able
to hear the net last week, but it was difficult.