Re: work on d-star clone?

[Dennis Boone <drb@msu.edu>]

 > I've not seen anything on D-STAR except ICOM gear.  While the protocol
 > is open, I understand that the vocoder chip ICOM uses is a proprietary
 > off the shelf item.  While the chips may be available to the
 > experimenter, I've read of concerns of there not being a second source
 > for the chips.

There are worse concerns than that.  Overloading identification data
(needed for regulatory reasons) for routing purposes, extremely limited
callsigns (if you're an Aussie with a four letter callsign suffix, no
D-Star for you...), one radio per callsign (can you say lots of
technically illicit club calls under US regs?), network size limitations
that could hail from the 70s, the undocumented nature of the supporting
protocol for internet linking and services, no software codecs without
NDA and $kilobucks, etc.  PLEASE WILL THE RF FOLKS GET SOME HELP FROM
THE DIGITAL FOLKS WHEN DESIGNING THIS STUFF?

High speed data ain't == D-Star, and I personally hope something
sensible comes along.

KB8ZQZ