[GreenKeys] Hal ST8000 modem

[Jim Haynes]

On Mon, 29 Jul 2013, COURYHOUSE at aol.com wrote:

> What do you consider the ultimate software modem Jim???
>  
A one-time front-runner was RITTY by K6STI.  He withdrew the product
because he was mad about people pirating his software, and also because
it only runs under DOS.  It has to run under DOS so it can take full
control of the computer and sound card, with no interruptions.

Today, I suspect near the top is cocoaModem by Kok Chen W7AY - but it
only runs on late Macintosh machines.  Neck and neck with it is 2Tone,
by G3YYD.  But 2Tone is not a standalone modem; it runs under a couple
of others that are out there.

Then what I personally use is fldigi, because it does lots of modes and
runs under Linux as well as Windows.  And is probably pretty close to the
others in performance.

It's all rather academic, because many of the newer hammy digital modes
implemented in software outperform FSK RTTY by a lot.  That's why you
hear all those PSK31 signals all the time and RTTY is fairly rare anymore
except for contests and DX.  My theory is that RTTY is preferred for
those because of the fast turnaround, and that the error rate is less
important, because if what you see looks like what you want to see you
call it good.