ICOM 7100 PTT

OK -  Last night the ICOM 7100 drove me insane.  I am working on getting a software TNC working and could get everything working but nothing was being transmitted.  I ran around in circles until I read on the net that the ICOM USB radios (like the 7100) will only do PTT using CAT commands.   Well that explained everything.

I found a program a nice gentleman in the UK wrote, G8BPQ called CAT7200 (http://www.cantab.net/users/john.wiseman/Documents/CAT7200.html)  that works around the problem.   It creates a virtual COM port to do the PTT with and when it sees RTS on that virtual port it sends the corresponding ICOM CI-V PTT command down the right port and everything works as expected.

His web page explains the process for installing it very well.   Worked like a charm.

Now I have APRS running through the 7100 

Note that this works for not just the ICOM IC-7100, but also for the IC-7200,  IC-7410, IC-7600 and the IC-9100 as well.


To give credit where credit is due, Google brought me to the following website as a starting point:
http://www.vk3bq.com/2014/12/04/icom-ic-9100-rts-cat-control/