We get a lot of questions about how to set various transceivers up for Digital Modes and one that comes up regularly is configuring the Yaesu FT-710. So on this page, I will show you how to configure a Yaesu FT-710 to work with our Digimode-4 interfaces setting it up with probably the most popular software at the moment, WSJT-X, and using the Windows operating system.

 

I am assuming you can find your way around your transceiver, you can install basic software and drivers on your PC and you have already installed your chosen Digimode software and can get to the setup menus etc. 
 

For the FT-710, you need our Digimode-4-Yaesu (Option 6). This has a built-in USB sound card connecting to the radio via the 6 pin Mini-Din Data port and it has a USB-B pass-through for the CAT control.
 

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The FT-710 is a modern transceiver offering significant flexibility when you come to set it up for digital mode operation. Because of this flexibility, setting the radio up can be a little confusing and so hopefully we offer some pointers in this guide.​

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In this guide, connectivity between your PC and the FT-710 is via USB-B port (for the CAT control of the frequency/mode of the radio) and via the the 6 pin Mini-Din RTTY/Data port for transmit and receive audio.

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Now you need to grab yourself a pen and some paper as we need to note a few things down to enter into your Digimode software setup later.

Let's gather some information about the the audio setup first
As we are going to use our Digimode-4 interface which has a built-in USB sound card, we need to see which unique name/ID the operating system allocates to it. We can use this information to set the audio device in your chosen Digimode software.
 

At the moment, only plug the Digimode-4 interface into your PC via its USB-A cable. The great news is that the  Digimode-4 uses the C-Media CM108B USB audio codec and the drivers are generic and built into Windows, MacOS and Linux already. Nothing needed to download and install yet.

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First, click on the Speaker Icon on the Windows task bar. Expand the audio playback devices list. Scroll down to find the one called "USB Audio Device".  It may be just called "USB Audio Device" or it may have a suffix in front like below where it is in this instance is is called "8-USB Audio Device".  Write down what you see as we need this for the Digimode software audio setup.

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Next, let's look at the CAT control

This is the first area of confusion with the The FT-710. It has 3 CAT control ports. CAT1, CAT2 and CAT3.

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• CAT1 is via the USB-B socket on the rear of the FT-710 and is known as the Enhanced COM Port. This port is used for the CAT control of frequency and mode of the radio.

• CAT2 is also via the USB-B socket and is known as the Standard COM Port. This is used for the PTT keying of the radio.

• CAT3 is a legacy hangover when CAT control was via the 8 pin Mini DIn CAT/Tuner/Linear port of the radio. Yeasu have retained this feature in the FT-710 but we will NOT use CAT3 in the setup.
   

In our setup, we will only be using CAT1 and CAT2.

 

​​​Before you connect the interface to the FT-710, you do need to load the Yaesu COM port drivers onto your PC. They are available from the Yaesu website here:  Yaesu FT-710 COM Port driver

The driver download is a .zip archive and within it is a .txt Release Notes file. Follow the Yaesu instructions in the release notes to install the correct driver for your PC/Operating System.

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Once you have installed the Yaesu COM port driver,  you can connect the Digimode-4 interface to the FT-710 via the USB-B plug and the 6 pin mini-din plug to the RTTY/Data port.

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Next we need to run up Windows Device Manager and look in the Ports (COM & LPT) section. If you are using Windows 11, you may need to enable legacy hardware to see these ports.

If you have successfully installed the driver, you should see a couple of "Silicon Labs Dual CP210x" entries as below and they will be allocated COM Port numbers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note down which COM port number the Enhanced COM port and Standard COM ports are allocated.

 

In the example they are The Enhanced Port is on COM5 and the Standard Port is on COM6.

 

But your PC will almost certainly be different and there is no guarantee the order of the ports. Your PC may have the standard port as the lower number. It does not matter so long as you have noted which is which.

 

Next we need to make some settings changes in the FT-710 menu to select for audio and CAT control.

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We will be using the our Digimode-4 interface to present audio and PTT to the FT-710 and so we need to enable these settings in the radios PSK/Data Mode Menu.

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Press the "FUNC" button on the FT-710 and then touch the "Radio setting" Icon on the screen.

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Within the Radio settings menu, then touch on the "Mode PSK/DATA" option.​​

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Within the Mode PSK/Data options, there are two settings you must change.
 

1. You need to change the "MOD SOURCE" to "REAR". What this does is when you put the Radio to PSK/DATA mode which you will use for modes such as FT8, this forces the radio to take the Transmit audio input signal from the 6 pin Mini-Din Data port which the Digimode-4 interface plugs into.
    

2. You need to change the "RPTT SELECT" to "RTS". What this does is tell the radio when in DATA PSK mode to take its PTT activation from the USB "Standard COM" port RTS signal. Remember we discussed earlier the Standard COM port is used for PTT keying etc.

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Other settings you might want to access in this menu are the "REAR OUT LEVEL" and the "REAR MOD GAIN" if you want to optimise the audio levels into and out of the radio via the Digimode-4 interface. Other settings in this menu are are out of the scope of this setup.

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Hit the "FUNC" button again bit this time select the "OPRATION SETTING" menu.

 

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From within the "Operation settings, General" menu, we just need to note down what baud rate CAT1 is selected to. It defaults to 38400 baud but note down the rate selected. We will need this for the WSJT-X CAT setup screen. Remember that CAT1 is the Enhanced COM port that is used for the CAT control or frequency and mode of your radio.

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