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Some Thoughts on Radio Programming Computers and Laptops Compiled, HTML'd and Maintained by Mike Morris WA6ILQ. |
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This is an opinion piece…
What works for me may or may not work for you.
The content below is derived from my experiences.
I'd appreciate emails with your comments, corrections, critiques, suggestions, ideas and updates
for this page (or any page).
Background:
I have known the owner of a local two-way shop for over 45 years. I'm in my 70s, semi-retired, and
have been helping out at his shop a couple of days a week for over a decade. The rear bench at the
shop still has two old desktop computers that are dedicated to radio programming... one is MS‑DOS
and Windows 98SE and the other computer is XP. Yes, they are still in use for various older
Motorola, Icom, Kenwood radios and a few other things (like the shop phone system).
The other workbenches at the shop have recent Windows 7 or 10 computers for everyday radio
programming.
His shop takes care of around 45 channels of commercial analog trunking, plus a similar number of channels of digital trunking (Icom IDAS MultiTrunk) and several conventional analog repeaters plus a privately owned trunked P25 system with 5 sites and 4 channels per site. These are all spread across a large number of mountaintop sites around southern California. All but two of the sites are 4x4 access only, and you have to let the Forest Service fire roads dry out for 4 to 5 sunny days after any measurable rain. He also takes care of a number of customer systems including base stations, mobile radios and handhelds.
The repeaters range from dual Motorola Maxtracs, dual GM300s, low and high power R1225 modules, MTR2000s, dual Kenwood TK-8180s, TKR-850s, NXR-810s, and a few more. Most of the systems were originally built by other shops and he inherited the maintanance. Most of the in-house designed repeaters are configured with the transmitter dialed down to 5 to 10 watts followed by a Henry Electronics 100 watt amplifier. The exciters run forever at the low power level and the amplifiers just plain work and are repairable.
The customer radios include Icom 6061Ds, Kenwood TK-8160s, TK-8360s, TK-7180 / 8180s, TK-840s, TK-880s, several models of Motorola APX (mobile and handheld), XTL (mobiles) and XTS (handhelds), XPRs, some Harris and some Tait radios. One customer still runs a Motorola X-9000 mobile.
In conclusion, the programming environment that the shop (and I) have to support ranges from MS‑DOS, 16‑bit Windows 98SE, Windows XP, 32‑bit and 64 bit Windows 7 and both 32‑bit and 64 bit Winows 10.
I also help maintain a number of ham radio and GMRS repeaters.
COM ports / Serial ports / Serial adapters:
Radio programming has been done with a serial cable since serial ports became common on desktop
computers. Unfortunately with the popularity of USB the real hardware serial ports ("COM ports")
on factory desktop and laptop PC's are becoming more and more rare. Desktops are a little easier,
you can still purchase a single or dual port serial card and install it into any slot in a desktop PC, and
at least one major manufacturer still offers one or two real 9-pin COM ports from the factory (the Dell
Optiplex XE series).
Some laptops have slots on the side for PCMCIA / PC Card and ExpressCard expansion cards... several manufacturers made/make serial port cards, one is here (off-site pointer, opens in a new browser tab), another is https://www.startech.com/en-us/cards-adapters/ec1s952 (off-site pointer, opens in a new browser tab).
USB to serial adapters and USB programming cables are becoming more and more the go-to
solution for radio, PBX and other device programming. FTDI-based USB adapters and cables
work with the stock Windows drivers, Prolific adapters are not as successful. Some Prolific
adapters only work with an old driver. Some proprietary cables (some older Icom cables come
to mind) require proprietary drivers.
This web page at www.miklor.com
has some useful information on USB drivers and the solutions to problems with the WCH
chipset (identified as the CH340, CH341, WCH340 or WCH341), the SiLabs chipset (CP210x),
and the Prolific chipset.
My last resort on every radio programming issue has been to use a computer with a real serial port and a real serial programming cable.
Eventually you may find yourself in a situation where a USB to serial adapters just doesn't work
with some target devices… One possible reason that nobody thinks of might be that the USB
connector provides +5 volts and some of the USB to serial adapter manufacturers cheat and
use ±5 volts as the source voltage of the I/O pin driver circuits.
The RS232 specification calls for voltage swings of up to ±15 volts as the signal
switches from zero to one and you will find ±8 to ±12 in common use.
To accomplish that ± swing requires a source of both positive and negative voltage to feed
the pin drivers. Making -5 volts from +5 volts inside the USB to serial adapter is not difficult but
any higher voltage requires a voltage booster circuit and some manufacturers just don't bother…
and most of the time they get away with it.
So if you have a problem, you might check to see what your target device actuallyneeds. If it works
with some computers and not with others don't assume its the computer or the software, it may be
the USB to serial adapter hardware that is at fault.
I've verified that my desktop computer (a Dell Precision 3620 with a factory rear panel COM port)
and the ones at the shop (several manufacturers with factory or plug-in-card based COM ports)
and the programming laptops that I've used have proper RS-232 voltages on the COM port connector.
One common problem with the USB cables (and USB-to-9-pin adapters) is identifying COM
port numbers as you plug in the cables without having to open Device Manager via the
Control Panel and then Administrative Tools and then Computer Management.
There used to be a Device Manager icon on my desktop until I found an easier way…
That easier way is the Helm Software Serial Port Notifier
program (off-site pointer, opens in a new browser tab). I have been
using it since late 2022 on Windows 7-32, Windows 10-32 and Windows 10-64
computers with zero problems.
It is a FREE(!) program and can be downloaded here
Serial Port Notifier. Local
copy: serial-port-notifier-v1.2.2.exe
The name was changed from "monitor" to "notifier" as it is not a true serial
port traffic monitor, it just announces the COM ports as they are plugged in to the computer or
unplugged… a small dialog pops up down in the lower right corner…
Example: "New Serial Ports: COM19", or "Serial Ports Removed: COM4".
Field Programming Computers:
Personally, I use Panasonic CF‑series of Toughbook laptops as my radio programming computers simply because they are very rugged, totally portable, readily available, inexpensive, repairable, and (most importantly) have a real 9‑pin hardware COM 1 port on the back. And new batteries are available for the CF-28, CF-29 and CF-30 models because they all use the same battery as the current CF-31 model (current as of the time of this writing).
I started out with a CF-28, moved up to a CF-29, however these days my everyday programming laptop is a CF-30 running 32‑bit Windows 7 sp1.
Why a CF-30? Two reasons:
Why 32 bits?
DOSbox-X is on-the-fly configurable... I can tell it to pretend that it's anything from an
original IBM PC (4.77 MHz 8088) to an 866 MHz Pentium III.
DOSbox-X just plain works (and it's free). And you can map any external COM number
to appear to the MS‑DOS program as any other COM number. This feature is
extremely useful as the original PC only had COM1 and COM2... you can tell the
MS-DOS program to use COM2 and the programming cable might be COM17.
Note: There is "DOSbox" and thre is "DOSbox-X", two separate
programs, two different support teams. A colleague suggested that I use DOSbox-X with
the comment that DOSbox seems to be more of a gamers virtual machine where DOSbox-X
seems to be more of a technical / industrial solution.
If the particular old radio is being recalcitrant I can break out the CF‑27 that runs MS‑DOS 6.22 or Windows 98SE directly. But I've been lucky, I've not needed to use it in over three years.
I have a Dell laptop running 64‑bit Win10 for the newest APX,
Turbo, Kenwoods, Icoms and other newer radios. Note that Chirp now
requires 64-bit Windows.
When the Dell dies I'll probably be looking for a Toughbook CF‑31.
Panasonic Toughbooks:
The CF‑ series Toughbooks are interesting laptops. Supposedly the initial model
(released in 1994 as the CF‑41) was designed in response to a set of feature requests
from the Japanese military... including that they be rugged enough to be driven over by a tank!!
No, I'm not kidding.
The second model was the CF-25 and was marketed as "fully rugged".
Fully rugged models have been in production since. The product line has fully-rugged,
semi-rugged and tablet models. They have liquid-crystal displays designed specifically for
visibility during daylight use. They also have protective hinged metal side panels, a
shock-mounted hard drive, a connector for a desktop or mobile docking station, thermal
design so they work from 15°F (-9.5 C) to 130°F (54.4 C) and
a moisture and dust-resistant keyboard and touchpad.
Toughbook hardware designs are updated during production and the various improvements
within a model are referred to as "Marks"... a Mark 1 is the original hardware
version, a Mark 2 is the first hardware change, a Mark 3 is the second hardware
change, and so on. The Mark number is encoded as a range in the first letter of the model
number - for example a CF‑30A through CF‑30E is a "Mark 1".
A CF‑30F through J is a "Mark 2".
A CF‑30K or later is a "Mark 3".
One model, the CF‑19, has had 8 Marks!
The Mark number is important on some models, for example the CF‑29
Mark 5 (the last one, first letter N or later) could boot off of USB, none of the prior
models or Marks could.
Radio Programming Computer Tips:
The relevance of these tips is dependent on your situation - what radios / devices you
will be supporting.
Several of the shops customers are tow truck operators and have older mobile radios in
service. Several of the repeaters that the shop maintains are based on dual GM300s (old!),
other repeaters are current production.
If, on the other hand, if the devices that you have to access or maintain are a few remotely
located Scom, RLC, CAT, Arcom or similar repeater controllers attached to Bridgecom,
Kenwood or GE repeaters then your radio programming laptop needs will be very different.
All of the above reasons are why my target was a CF‑30 Mark 3 when I went looking for a field-rugged laptop that I could dedicate to field radio programming. I also wanted Win 7-32 already installed (I didn't want to have to do a search for a working installer with a good software key and a full set of Toughbook hardware drivers). I also wanted factory Wifi however that wasn't a deal-breaker as I knew it could be field-installed. It took about 5 months but I found a CF‑30K in almost new condition on eBay with a working factory copy of 32-bit Windows 7. The fact that it booted Win 7 meant that it came with a caddy and a hard drive of at least 80 gigs (that was the smallest factory supplied drive when the CF-30 was in production). I then bought a new 1 TB drive (about $50) and after the CF-30 arrived I imaged the hard drive that came with it (only 2.9 gigs were in use) onto the new drive. During the imaging process I created a 5 gig MS‑DOS partition (drive D:) to hold the MS‑DOS based RSS for when I booted it with the MS‑DOS thumb drive. Or for when I run DOSbox-X. A few months later I expanded the RAM from the 1 gig it came with (a pair of 512 modules) to a full 4 gigs (two 2 gig modules, under $50 for the pair).
After the boss saw my CF‑30 he had me build three for the shop.
Shortcomings:
The only two shortcomings that I have found with the CF‑series Toughbooks are:
1) The 1024x768 XGA display. My current laptop has a 1920x1080 display and the
CF‑30 feels cramped. But I'm not using the CF‑30 as a
word processor / email / web surfing computer!
2) It's heavier and a little bigger than most laptops. I don't care. It's kept in the trunk of my
car or tossed into the back of shop 4x4 for a site visit.
In both cases it's a field radio programming computer that can take a fall from 6 feet
and shrug it off... (am I dating myself to say it could take a licking and keep on ticking?)
The physical ruggedness, the hardware COM 1 port (that always works) and other
characteristics are worth it.
Trivia: There are CF‑ series models with built-in GPS - it appears as COM 2.
A friend's CF‑30 came with it.
Other rugged laptops:
There aren't many - and those that are available are generally expensive and have replacement
parts issues. A friend who works at a local hospital reports that the contractor who maintains their
emergency electrical power generators uses a company-issued
Getac (off-site pointer, opens in a new
browser tab) brand laptop and loves it... but there aren't many out there and parts (like a replacement
keyboard or battery) have to be ordered from the company in Irvine, California.
Dell has "Rugged" and a "Rugged Extreme" product lines... models include
the Latitude 5430 Rugged Laptop and Latitude 7330 Rugged Extreme Laptop. They show up on
eBay occasionally.
I have no experience with the Getac or the Dell Rugged units.
Contact Information:
The author, Mike Morris WA6ILQ, can be contacted here.
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This page originally posted on 10-Dec-2023
Article text, artistic layout and hand-coded HTML © Copyright 2008 by Mike Morris WA6ILQ.
This web page, this web site, the information presented in and on its pages and in these modifications and conversions is © Copyrighted 1995 and (date of last update) by Kevin Custer W3KKC and multiple originating authors. All Rights Reserved, including that of paper and web publication elsewhere.