Kenwood D710G TNC Won't Monitor ID Packets?

Question

I recently got a Kenwood TM-D710G and have been experimenting with using its internal TNC connected to a serial port on my laptop for packet / PBBS operation. I can connect to PBBSes whose callsigns I know, and I can get the TNC to monitor (that is, print to the terminal) most traffic on the channel using the commands:

MONITOR ON
MALL ON
MCON ON
MCOM ON

However, I cannot seem to get the TNC to monitor the 'ID' packets sent by other packet systems. This is a problem when I go to other cities with packet systems on the air whose callsigns I don't know.

If I use the TRACE ON command, the TNC does show hex dumps of ID packets, such as the following one from station WU8C:

a2 a6 a8 40 40 40 e0 ae aa 70 86 40 40 65 03 cd 00 03 00 cc 07 04 00 01 ae aa 70 86 40 40 64 2c 66 30 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 2c 66 01 01

Granted, it is possible to decode these by hand (that one decodes to "QST WU8C..."), but it would be nice not to have to do so.

If anyone has any hints on how I might get the TNC to decode and display these packets, I'll be very grateful.

Answer 1

On most of TNCs you can dump the monitor settings by the "display monitor" (or "display m") command

cmd:display monitor
BUDLIST  OFF NONE
CSTAMP   ON
DAYSTR   mm/dd/yy hh:mm:ss
FILTER   OFF
HEADERLN ON
LLIST    OFF NONE
MONITOR  ON
MALL     ON
MBEACON  ON  <---- If on, monitors packets addressed to BEACON and ID
MCON     ON
MCOM     ON
MHEADER  ON
MRESP    ON
MRPT     ON
MSTAMP   ON
MXMIT    ON
PID      ON
SUPLIST  OFF NONE
TRACE    OFF