I finally bit the bullet and upgraded my ham shack computer from Windows XP to Windows 8.1. With the expiration of XP support it was inevitable to upgrade at some point. I thought briefly about Windows 7, but noted that the hardware requirements were generally the same as for 8.1. No need to limp from one version to the next.
I started this effort about four months ago as I purchased the necessary memory upgrades on eBay. That upgrade went fine, although I did have to return some chips that didn’t work. For the Windows update I purchased Windows 8 on the Microsoft site and downloaded it. That, of course, is a complete rebuild. It did offer to save the user files and I had downloaded the critical items to a flash drive.
The biggest snag was finding the right driver for the Linksys Wi-Fi adapter. Fortunately, I found a great online post about the correct driver to use that matches the chip rather than the device as Linksys doesn’t provide a driver for Windows 8. That worked like a champ, although I found I had to install it once more after upgrading from 8.0 to 8.1. The only other snag was getting my external USB hard drive working. The key reason there is that it is set up for a Mac and needs a special driver from Seagate. Got that installed and all is well.
I did spend a bit of time reconfiguring N1MM, MMTTY, and 2Tone. I also added the K3/P3 Utilities. I used to run Ham Radio Deluxe DM780 for Hellschrieber and SSTV. I was using version 5. Now I need to consider whether I’m really interested in upgrading to HRD 6. Need to think about that some more.
If you’re looking at this task, nothing to it but to do it! Well, ok, and maybe do it over and over again until it all works…
