VARA HF not working on fresh install

[Saberhawk09]

Title says it all. I flashed a brand new install of Bookworm on my Pi 4, installed 73Linux, and rebooted.

And then installed Vara HF from Pi apps and rebooted once more. Using PAT Menu I cannot update my grid square, and I also cannot use Vara HF. It seems the modem has no connection to PAT.

When I select a station to connect to, PAT seems like it works but the modem never changes bandwidth or keys my radio.

I'm not really sure what's going on here. Any assistance would be appreciated.

[km4ack]

Are you able to open VARA from the menu? If so, have you configured VARA for your radio?

[corvus-ch]

I have run into the same issue.

Raspberry Pi 4, RaspianOS 64bit Bookworm (12.10). Commit 8ef9406fa2f07d1012030a7369d9b6a5ea88f2cb of 73Linux.

Installed Pat and Pi-Apps (by selecting VARA) with 73Linux. Then used Pi-Apps to install VARA HF.

When running pat connect, I can see that pat connects to the VARA modem and that the modem is listening.

But nothing else happens, no sound on the output of VARA and no PTT send to the TRX. And then, pat times out.

$ pat connect varahf:///HB9AK
2025/04/01 19:53:46 my-rig ready. Dial frequency is 21.113.50 MHz.
2025/04/01 19:53:46 VARA modem (VARA HF v4.8.9) initialized
2025/04/01 19:53:46 Connecting to HB9AK (varahf)...
2025/04/01 19:57:21 VARA modem disconnected unexpectedly!
2025/04/01 19:57:21 Unable to establish connection to remote: connect timeout

PI-Apps does install all sorts of things into the Wine environment. So I went ahead and deleted it (rm -rf ~/.wine). I then used select commands from https://github.com/km4ack/73Linux/blob/master/app/stable/x86_64/VARA.bapp to create it again and install VARA.

winetricks winxp
winetricks sound=alsa
winetricks vb6run
winetricks -q vcrun2015

wget https://downloads.winlink.org/VARA%20Products/VARA%20HF%20v4.8.9%20%20setup.zip
unzip "VARA HF v4.8.9  setup.zip"
wine 'VARA setup (Run as Administrator).exe'
wget https://github.com/km4ack/pi-scripts/raw/master/pdh.dll.zip
unzip pdh.dll.zip
mv pdh.dll $HOME/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32

The result is the same.

[corvus-ch]

Looks like a 32 vs 64 bit issue: Botspot/pi-apps#2757 (comment).

[corvus-ch]

It also looks like they way Pi Apps sets up things is unsuitable for VARA: Botspot/pi-apps#2757 (comment).

[km4ack]

That's a bummer. I thought it would be a better experience on the Pi after VARA was moved to Pi-Apps. It works very well on x86 but I suppose the additional requirement of box86 is proving to be a challenge. If they drop it from Pi-Apps, I'll have to drop it from 73Linux as well for the Pi. Hopefully they can get it resolved.

[corvus-ch]

[…] If they drop it from Pi-Apps, I'll have to drop it from 73Linux as well for the Pi. Hopefully they can get it resolved.

I would not go that far. Instead, use Pi-Apps to install Wine (which includes also box86 and is the hard part here). Then use the same setup of the wine environment as in your x86 VARA install but with a clean wine prefix. This is what worked in my tests.

[km4ack]

Trying to think this through and find a workable solution. I'd like to automate as much as possible so the end user doesn't have to jump through a bunch of hoops. It seems like it would be possible to create a script that pulls the needed scripts from Pi-Apps repo to install wine & box86. Then use your test method to install vara in a clean wine environment. What's your opinion @corvus-ch ? Would you be interested in attempting such a beast?