Making tk75 Work in Solaris 9

tk75 allows UNIX computers to communicate with an Icom R-75 shortwave radio. It was written to run in Linux, so it should run on all UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems. ... Including Solaris.

The computer is a Sun Ultra5 running Solaris 9. The tcl/tk software needed to run tk75 was installed from the Software Companion CD included in the Solaris 9 media kit. Port B in the Ultra5 is connected to the R-75's serial port with a Radio Shack RS-232C cable ( part #26-117B ).

tk75 was downloaded from http://www.parnass.com/tk75/dl4linux.html which includes instructions for gzip/untaring it.

The distribution includes a file called tk75.csh, in this file, edit the line that says:

/usr/bin/wish $tk75/tk75.tcl

So that it says

/opt/sfw/bin/wishx $tk75/tk75.tcl

Since tk75 expects serial device files to be character devices and NOT links, find the /devices file for the /dev file for the serial port your using. Since in this example were using port b:

> ls -l /dev/ttyb
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Aug 15 23:31 /dev/ttyb -> term/b
> ls -l /dev/term/b
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 52 Aug 15 23:29 /dev/term/b -> ../../devices/pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ebus@1/se@14,400000:b
> ls -l /devices/pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ebus@1/se@14,400000:b
crw-rw-rw- 1 root sys 20, 1 Aug 17 03:39 /devices/pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ebus@1/se@14,400000:b
>

Make sure the /devices file is a character file, and has perms 666. Next, either edit ( if you have one ) or create ~/.tk75rc and put ( or change if the file exists ) the following line in it:

Device=/devices/pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ebus@1/se@14,400000:b

And thats it, now you can run the tk75.csh. Just make sure you radio is connected and turned on, or the program will freeze and you'll have to either ^c it or xkill it.


Back to my homepage Last Updated: 8/17/2003

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This work is dedicated to the Public Domain.