Winlink-Mac: Internet Email over Radio on a Mac

This is Ki7QFV with a basic how-to in getting a Mac Laptop to work with Winlink Express over RF. To do this you'll be installing Wine/Homebrew and WinlinkExpress. You'll see lots of errors, just continue through the process.

In my example, I used a TNC-X from Coast Communications, a USB cable, over a 1200 baud serial connection. But the same basic concept should also work for bluetooth. Note I had to force the serial port speed to 1200 baud because that's how my TNC-X came configured... although that can be changed.

Ignore the packet/bluetooth comments, this still applies to winlink over USB. Ray Rischpater, KF6GPE put the original how-to together for a TH-D74 and bluetooth, and I've revised it to support Winlink for a TNC-X (and hopefully a Signalink)

OPENME[1]

Summary of steps: (and do this with a FAST internet connection - lots to download.

0) Make sure the Mac driver is already installed for your serial device! 1) Install Homebrew

    a) open terminal
    b) run /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

2) in the same terminal window, type:

    a) brew install wine && brew install winetricks
    b) WINEARCH=win32; export WINEARCH
    c) winetricks dotnet35sp1

3) open a new terminal window (so you have 2 windows to look at). These steps will link your Mac driver to Winlink Express.

    a) cd /dev
    b)  ls
    c) **look at the list - which one looks like it has the word serial in it?** substitute that in line e below
    d)  cd ~/.wine/dosdevices
    e)  ls -s /dev/cu.usbserial-#### com2