This is a portable packet station, complete with Windows Server computer, TNC, and mobile radio.

It's waterproof, portable, and pretty durable. Here's what's inside and how I made it.


The radio is an Icom IC-228H, a 45W 2m mobile radio. I interfaced its microphone input to the Kantronics KPC-9612 TNC using the gray cable as shown in the picture. The mic connector on the radio also has audio out for the TNC, so it is convenient for a single cable. The computer has an onboard ethernet, but it is not used since I have the USB WiFi card, shown on the left. Power is supplied by the battery on the left (note power switch on the top) and distributed to each of the components through Anderson Power Pole connectors and the distribution box shown.

Here is the tiny single board computer, an AMD Geode running completely fanless and on a 12V DC supply. I installed an actual 12V regulator to prevent any power spikes or over-voltage conditions from reaching the board. The board consumes less than 700mA on normal operation, even with the ram and flash drive. The 7812 regulator is easily capable of delivering up to 1500mA and the input voltage is never likely to be over 14V so it doesn't even need a heat sink. I soldered a 0.1uF capacitor across the output to absorb noise.

The CPU runs at 500MHz, pretty slow by today's standards. However it gets the job done. It has 1GB of ram on the back side of the board, and an 8GB flash drive that it uses instead of a hard disk. It is completely solid-state.

Here is the internal battery, with its own fuse and switch. The system is designed to run off an external power source, with a power cable with power pole connectors that plugs in to the distribution box. This internal battery will either run the system or charge when the switch is on.

The station uses a Kantronics KPC-9612 TNC. I added a USB WiFi stick instead of using the onboard ethernet on the motherboard. The power distribution box shown rear left distributes power to the 5 devices using 12VDC.

Here is the Icom IC-228H radio, an older single band 2m 45W mobile rig. It feeds audio and mic signals directly to the TNC.


Packaging it all up together, here is the top-down view of the box.


Here is the station, complete and running. The radio is hooked to the roof antenna, and it is tuned to 145.670MHz. The callsign is KD6GKD-4 for the RMS node, if you are in the area and wish to connect to it.

Any questions about it? Feel free to leave a comment and I'll reply.
73 de KD6GKD

I finally got tired of waiting for my old slow computer so I decided to upgrade it to newer technology. I got a Biostar motherboard with lots of features, for only $56. I got an intel Core 2 Quad 2.5GHz chip, so it should have a bit of horsepower I think. It's not the fastest thing on the planet, but I don't think it's too underpowered either. I got 4GB of DDR2 800 RAM, which is the max the motherboard can use. That was one limitation, but didn't seem to be a big concern since I wasn't going to use more than 4GB anyway.
I also got an external USB port for the rear panel, because this board has a total of 10 USB ports on it. I also got a card reader with an additional front USB port on it. As it turns out, the Antec case has a card reader on it, and it isn't interchangeable with this internal one, so I will just use the built-in unit. The board has built-in graphics, an nVidia GeForce 7100 which uses shared RAM. Not so good for gaming and the like, but I can make do with it. It has both a DVI and a VGA port on the motherboard for dual video output. It has 4 SATA2 ports, supporting RAID0, 1, 5, and 10. However, I am only using one IDE drive on this desktop. I have another one of these boards in a Windows Home server box, running all 4 SATA drives and a couple IDE drives as well. It also boasts a Gig-E network card and high-def audio built in to the $56 motherboard...


I took apart the case, and began to remove the old boards. It's an Asus board with a single core Athlon 64 running 2.2GHz, so it has a bit of power. It was much higher end a couple years ago when I got it. The case is an Antec Aria, for a small footprint, but still takes a standard ATX size motherboard.
 It is kind of tight in there... The DVD and hard drive mount on the top in a swing-up detachable arrangement, which makes it easier to get in to the board. The old heatsink and cpu are much bigger than the new one, so there will be a bit more air space inside.

Here is the new board installed, but not yet hooked up. Note the three white IDC connectors near the edge of the board - those are 6 USB ports, the other 4 are already on the back panel. I did not end up using the 4-port card since the 2 front USB ports and the card readers used up 4 ports already anyway. I continued hooking it all up, and everything seemed to fit properly.


Here is the other side view of the completed unit, just a half-hour to get it all swapped out and running again.


There are a lot of cables, but there's much more free air space now.

Vista's processor rating is 5.9, the RAM is 4.8. Graphics for Aero is 3.3, and Gaming Graphics rating is 3.0 so barely enough to get by. With the RAM, the CPU, and the motherboard, total upgrade price came to $400 even. It's a bit pricey, but the 45nm technology on the quad core chip gives me a lot more total computing power for a lot less power consumption and dissipation. I figure that total power savings over the old board will save me the cost of the chip ($266) over its three year planned lifetime.

Not a bad box for just a few C notes. We'll see how well it runs Visual Studio now...