More EchoHam problems!

[sllewk]

Morning all, For my 83rd birthday (Monday 10th) have been presented with a MacBook Pro 13, model A1278 mid 2012 running El Capitan. Now I downloaded EchoHam from the App Store and all went well until I opened the program. I cannot get a list of stations, under the title Location there is "Conference Servers" and all three boxes are highlighted and the Server has been activated. There is no way I can get further than "Conference Servers". As I activate the Server I get a quick flash of a running total of stations available (and I mean a quick flash). I have compared all settings on my Mac Mini and EchoHam is a carbon copy of the other, the mini echo ham is up and running and works as it should. I have gone as far as deleting and re downloading but nothing I do will get it to work. Can anyone tell me if the current issue of EchoHam is compatible with El Capitan? I ask that because in my limited mind there is nothing else left to query!
Very best regards from Keith in Derby England.

 

[sllewk]

Hi everyone, after much time and research I have found that EchoHam 2.02 (the latest issue) is not compatible with El Capitan. It has taken a full morning of delving on tintanet to find it out but I am now of the opinion that EchoHam is not for me as Apple in their wisdom do not seem bothered about it. That being so I shall delete all of the related software, put it down to experience and relax. Thanks to you all.
Very best wishes from Keith in Derby England.

 

[Slydude]

Enjoyed our FaceTime chat yesterday. I assume that this means our idea to compare the settings on the two Macs did not bear fruit?

I thought that the Mac running El Capitan was running correctly and the problem was with the Mac that has Sierra.

 

[sllewk]

Hello Slydude, sadly you have mixed the two computers up! Sierra seemed to be running OK and El Capitan on the MacBook pro 13 would not have EchoHam at any price. I spent all morning on tintanet researching the software and found too many gripes etc about it not running on the El Capitan software. In fact it was all doom and gloom so I decided that I have had enough of EchoHam and am going to remove all traces when I can find time so to do. I have deleted it from the MacBook Pro but have yet to remove it from the Mac Mini; probably sometime tomorrow if I am in the mood. I really enjoyed our chat on Facebook yesterday as well, it made a lovely change to talk to a friend instead of family, thank you very much Sly.
very best regards from Keith in Derby England.

 

[Slydude]

Hello Slydude, sadly you have mixed the two computers up!

Color me embarrassed. Let's keep that under our hats shall we. The rest of the team thinks I am a genius. Probably best if we don't disturb that illusion.

Now that you mention it. I remember discussing that with you. It was the reason we did not use Migration Assistant to transfer the settings.

 

[MacInWin]

Keith, I responded to your email to me. I haven't had a chance to look at the issue, given that I have visitors in town. I am going to continue to see if I can find a solution, and if I do, I'll email you with it.

 

[Slydude]

Thanks for stepping on this one Jake. When it comes to some aspects of this problem I'm out of my depth. Here's hoping you can get Keith going.

 

[sllewk]

Slydude and Jake, plus all who are interested, In the very bowels of my mind/brain I seem to recall something about some software called WINE. It was something to do with an acronym of WINdows and some thing else! Not to sure about it as it comes as I say from "way back when" sort of thing. In fact I might just google it to see what might be revealed. As I write it dates back to around 1999'ish when a radio club member was early into Apple computers (one of the first models into UK at that time) it could be even later/earlier than that. I was not really interested and I faded into the background and dropped out of the conversation thereby not getting very much info at all. Does any-one on this forum know anything about wine (apart from the very obvious). Would I be able to run just Echolink on it without contaminating my Apple MacBook with Windows software? I realise that Echolink is basically Windows software but the line might be drawn just passed that point.
Very best regards from Keith in Derby England.

 

[sllewk]

Hi, I have googled WINE software and am about to crawl back under my stone! It talks about prepackaged binary form and ready to compile code form!!!!! Excuse me but I am not only completely lost but a sudden fog has surrounded me. What in the name of all things normal is "prepackaged binary form"? Not into that at all so I return to the back of the class to ruminate and cogitate my bad luck and lack of education. I rest my case.
Very best regards from Keith in Derby England.

 

[chscag]

Hi Keith:

You might want to give WineBottler a try. It's a WINE derivative with which I have had pretty good luck running some Windows games with it. It's possible that you may be able to get Echolink working with it. WineBottler is fairly self explanatory and can automate some Windows things. However, if Echolink depends on drivers and other connection software, I doubt it will work.

 

[MacInWin]

chscag, EchoHam has a Mac variant, EchoMac, and the developer of EchoHam also has a Mac version, so WINE or Windows is not needed. What is tricky with it is that certain ports need to be open and available to it through the firewall. I just need to get a couple of hours with it to get an exact sequence of steps to open those ports for the packets that EchoHam wants. I think any WINE attempt would just aggravate the process by adding another layer to be dealt with.

 

[Slydude]

@Jake My understanding is that the program works on one of Keith's Macs but not on the other. Doesn't that suggest the proper ports are open? I thought about using Migration Assistant but the machines have two different versions of the OS and there is one version he prefers over the other though I don't remember which.

When we spoke via FaceTime the other day we did not have time to work through tranferring just some things.

If we transferred a copy of the Echoham program and preferences from the "good" install to 'bad" one would that help? I have not had time to track down the proper files though.

 

[MacInWin]

Sly, I seem to recall having to set ports on the hardware firewall (router) and also in the software firewall of the OS. It's been so long that I need to review what I finally did to get it working. I did have time today to test on my Safari MBP, and both EchoHam and EchoMac worked with the test server, so the ports are properly set here, or at least for working the test. I do have a new hardware wifi router, and I don't remember setting the ports on it, so maybe the ports get set by EchoHam when it starts. As I said, it's been a long time and I just need a couple of hours to test. I do have a system still on El Cap, so I can do an exact test for Keith next week, when the grandchildren aren't here any more.

 

[Slydude]

I figured you would probably have a few more insights than I did. I have the software on ly system but you can't get far in the way of test beyondd the fact that it is running since I do not have a call sign to enter.

BTW For the record I did not break Keith's installation just to get him to make a FaceTime call to me.

 

[sllewk]

Good morning all, allow me to straighten things up a little bit; Mavis tells me it is not all that long ago that I heard about Wine. Evidently this is a case of forgetting how quickly time goes by as you get older (poor old ******), she reckons it is more like ten years ago than the 18 or so that I was remembering! Now I have googled Wine and printed off some instructions installing(all ten pages of it), WOW---- what a performance, looking at it all it is way out of my league as I do not have the patience for that sort of thing these days. Chscag, thanks for the idea of winebottler, I might just look at that hoping for a much simpler installation. MacInWin, you are supposed to have family visiting not rooting around looking at my problems, but thank you anyway, it is much appreciated here. When I last messed about with EchoHam I had ports 5198, 5199 and 5200 opened by a Virgin Media engineer and I was at least hopeful of some success. At the moment I am of a mind to put it all to bed and sleep on it for a day or two and hope for some inspiration from somewhere. I thank each and every one of you for your help.
Very best regards from Keith in Derby England.

 

[sllewk]

Hi, With sinking heart I have just read on a previous note that the Firewall settings enter into the plot which seems to thicken as each day goes by! Will it never end I begin to ask my self? I am starting to think that I was very foolish to even try to start this whole debate and I am causing a lot of people a lot of hassle. I am so sorry to all of you who are doing the best that is possible to help me, Thank you all so very much indeed.
Very best regards from Keith in Derby England.

 

[rbird2]

I also tried to get EchoLink to work under MacOS Sierra on my Macbook Pro and finally gave up.

Since I do have a Windows 10 Bootcamp partition on the Macbook Pro I can run the official Echolink Windows version.

It would be nice if someone came up with a Echolink program that works with current MacOS's.

 

[MacInWin]

rbird2, I have successfully run both EchoHam and EchoMac on my MBP with Sierra, so there is something wrong with your setup if you cannot. When we were helping Keith get it going before, we discovered that certain ports on the firewall need to be opened to allow the EchoHam and EchoMac communications to pass. Stay tuned to this thread next week when I get the time to investigate it further and get back to Keith.

 

[Slydude]

@rbird2 Just out of curiosity what router do you have on your network? One of the things I remember from last year when we worked on this with Keith is that some routers made it difficult at best to tell whether the appropriate ports had actually been opened.

 

[rbird2]

Netgear R7800