Go to the QSO tab and set existing folders to "Incoming files directory" and "Outgoing files directory" in the "File Transfer" section. I hope it solves your issue. --Gene

I forgot to state in the original post that I'm using the latest versions of the VARA modem (4.8.5) and VarAC (8.6.2). Switching between the tabuler view and the non-tabuler view did not help. Thanks in advance. Gene.

Isn't it this that was introduced in the VARA Modem 4.8.3?  I've been seeing more frequent busy indicators than before since I upgraded the modem.  But in my case, it's not constant on. You may want to see how it changes after rolling it back to an earlier version of the modem.   v4.8.3 (07/02/2024)  ...   Improvements in Busy detection ... Gene (JI1BQW)

Okay, NP. I can live with it. Thanks! Gene - JI1BQW

Hi, I've been running two instances of VarAC on one PC by having two separate VarAC folders, rather than one. I now want to merge it into one folder following the instructions here. I'm almost done, but one thing. Is there a way to merge two different existing VarAC.db's into one?

Thanks, Irad. Understood. I would be able to live with the configurable wait time. Gene

Great to see more JA callsigns on the pskreporter for VARAC. Gene / JI1BQW

Just my guess. You set the wine sound to alsa. ALSA does not let two separate apps access one sound card at a time. If one VARA modem accesses a sound device, another instance cannot do the same device. What happens if you run the main VARA only without a monitor?

If you have set your Wine to use ALSA, you may want to try "alsamixer" from a command line terminal.

Hi, You seem to have been caught by a wine/.net trap. Been there done that. I scratched my head many times. What do you get when you run "wine uninstaller"? I have two Linux Mint PCs with running VarAC. Both only have "Wine Mono Runtime 7.4.0" and "Wine Mono Windows Support 7.4.0". Nothing others. If you have anything else, uninstalling them might help. If nothing helps, it may be a good idea to remove your Wine and wine bottle and reinstall it. Don't use any install scripts. Just install the latest version of Wine-hq, install the latest version of the VARA modem from its installer, copy the latest version of the VarAC folder under "C:\", and go to my previous post. My two Mint PCs work with this. Good luck. Gene

Hi, I'm not a Wine expert, but let me share my findings. I'm using VARA/VarAC under Wine on Linux Mint for everyday QSOs. Assuming you have already installed Wine, winetricks, VARA modem, VarAC, there are still a few things that can be overlooked. Under Linux: Add user to "dialout" group, if you use tty devices (COM ports). $ sudo gpasswd -a $USER dialout Install the Segoe Emoji font set. This is a recent requirement of VarAC. Without this, VarAC does not startup. Follow the instructions below. https://github.com/SpudGunMan/segoe-ui-linux Under Wine: $ winetricks sound=alsa $ winetricks vb6run Note that VARA modem works directly through ALSA now (not through Pulseaudio). For VARA Modem: Replace the original pdh.dll under "~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32" with those from the following. http://download.microsoft.com/download/winntsrv40/update/5.0.2195.2668/nt4/en-us/nt4pdhdll.exe Once you run this, five files are extracted. Copy three pdh.* files to the system32 directory in your wine bottle. Now you should be able to launch the VARA modem standalone. $ cd ~/.wine/drive_c/VARA $ wine VARA.exe For VarAC: VarAC.ini is no longer packaged in the distribution. Instead, it is created by VarAC.exe when it's launched very first time. In the settings menu, check "Linux compatible mode" on. If you use a COM port, see "~/.wine/dosdevices" to find the correct COM port mapping that is sym-linked to your tty device (such as /dev/ttyUSB0). Hope it helps. Gene - JI1BQW

I wish I could see many users beaconing and chatting. 😉 I'd like it to be retained. Gene - JI1BQW

Thanks. I might not be clear enough. It might be better to retain old logs by renaming it differently such as VarAC.log.1, VarAC.log.2, and so on, just like Linux's syslog. Gene

Good to hear it fixed your problem. I installed it only in the wine bottle, but I don't think it does any harm in ~/.fonts. Gene

Hi, This is most likely caused by the Emoji fonts newly introduced in the latest version of VarAC. You can google and find how to install "Segoe UI Emoji" on wine. Gene JI1BQW

Found it super fast! Thanks, Irad. Gene

Yes, I've found that the 60-sec timeout of the latest version is too short too.

I like the ideas too. For the second point, do you know you can specify the ini file as the command line option like: "VarAC.exe VarAC_IC705.ini". This makes my life a bit easier. Gene

Nice to hear it solved your problem. I didn't know Andy's distro. It looks good for low-end or old PCs. I'll add it to my list. Thank you. -- Gene

VARA modem comes back, now with GREEN TCP indicator, but VarAC screen doesn't fill in, just dies after a second or two. I happened to hit a very similar situation when I was testing installations yesterday. I was able to solve it by copying VarAC.ini file from another working environment. Worth trying. Gene