Yeah, I’m drinking the Mac kool aid now. While I still have Linux doing some things and windows PCs around, I bought a Mac for school and because I like the ecosystem (already had an iPhone).

And I can’t leave well enough alone… so I had to see what I could do with it.

First off, the x6100 is not happy about rig control. Originally, I thought this was an issue with USB interfacing and serial and things like that. I tried using FLrig and had zero success, except for things hanging up. With the newest firmware on the 6100, I did manage to get WFview working, but only across a network connection with the radio. I have yet to get any USB control working with that radio.

X6100 and WFVIEW across a network connection

On a whim, I grabbed my 7300 off the shelf, plugged into the USB, and told WFView to automatically find the serial device, and then immediately connected to the radio, and displayed a great spectrum with minimal lagging if any.

I gave FLrig a shot with the 7300, and it didn’t work at all. I’m fairly well convinced that that software is a complete turd.

Note that all of my attempts with FLRIG have been tried both natively on the Mac and through parallels on a windows environment.

I started looking into N1MM for the Mac, which doesn’t exist. So I installed it on parallels, and tried to connect with the 7300 (remember, FLRIG wasn’t working anyway) and noted a driver issue with the serial adaptor within parallels. At this point I’ve given up on windows inside the Mac for this stuff.

I then came across RUMLOG NG (exists for both windows and Mac). Rumlog happily communicated with the 7300 as a serial connection. So I have a decent general purpose and contesting logger. But no waterfall, except on the radio (boo-hoo, right?).

After some digging, I couldn’t find much on getting Rumlog and WFview to play together, like N1MM did. Time to tinker. I tried the stuff that worked on windows to no avail. Then I noticed the “external control” function in WFview. on a whim, I set up a TCP port and did the same in Rumlog, and everything just WORKED. No FLRig mess, no emulating other radios, nothing.

Here’s my setup, and the settings I used

Now, I haven’t run a contest with these to stress test it, but the functionality is there. I also have yet to try two radios or any networking (multi-multi?)… give me time.

As far as the 6100, I’ve tried all of the settings (serial, tcp, icom server… ) Rumlog just doesn’t seem to like it. Might just chalk it up to being a cheap radio.