Programming CDM750's

[SteveC0625]

I just received a pair of used CDM750's VHF, and am having some problems programming the P1 and P2 programmable buttons.

Our primary channel has a repeater at the north end of the county, but operates simplex on the output side of the repeater for the central, western, and southern areas of the county. I entered the proper frequencies and TPL codes and the radio hits the repeater just fine. I also changed the personality to simplex and that worked fine, too.

I want P1 Short Press to toggle the Talkaround feature, and set it to do that in the Programmable Buttons menu. I also checked the Talkaround box in the proper personality menu.

The software writes to the radio properly, but when I replace the programming cable with the microphone, pressing the P1 button just gets a single low pitched beep and no change in the repeater access. It if works correctly, I think I am supposed get an indicator light above the P1 button, and the tone should be a beep-beep indicating in Talkaround. Pressing again should turn the light off and give another beep-beep.

I tried programming P2 for Talkaround and got the same results. Can't seem to get Hi/Low Power to work, either. Tried a few other functions for P1 and P2 and nothing seems to take.

All of the rest of the Personality programming seems to be taking just fine. I've got AutoScan working on two channels, too.

The results are consistently identical with both radios. I am using the RKN4081 ribless cable, latest version of the Professional CPS 6.12.02, and running it on an old Compaq laptop with Win 98.

What am I missing?

[HLA]

sounds like you programmed the frequency into the radio but you havn't assigned it anywhere. go to the last section, personality assigned to zone, and make shure you have your channels assigned into the zone. what's the firmware in the radio?

[SteveC0625]

sounds like you programmed the frequency into the radio but you haven't assigned it anywhere. go to the last section, personality assigned to zone, and make sure you have your channels assigned into the zone. what's the firmware in the radio?

All four personalities were assigned to Zone 1 properly when I first programmed both radios. The radios transmit and receive correctly on all four channels.

I have channels one and two set up to Auto Scan and they do that correctly, too. Since I don't want either channel to ever drop out of scan, I didn't bother with priority scan or revert or any other features. Channel 2 is RX only so there is never a problem with which channel I am transmitting on.

The only thing that doesn't seem to take is assigning functions to the programmable buttons P1 and P2. No matter which function, no matter which key (short or long press on either P1 or P2), nothing seems to take.

Remember that both radios are performing identically. Neither one will accept any function assignments to P1 or P2 function keys.

[HLA]

Just for fun try turning the autoscan off on every channel. It may not let those functions work while it's scanning? While it's scanning it's basically in all recieve only so no need to change anything else?

[SteveC0625]

Just for fun try turning the autoscan off on every channel. It may not let those functions work while it's scanning? While it's scanning it's basically in all recieve only so no need to change anything else?

That put me on the right track. I removed all scan everywhere and then added in Talkaround and Hi/Low Power. Both worked fine.

I then added scan back in, but did not use Auto Scan. I set P2 to toggle scan on/off and that works, too.

When I turned scan on, the toggles for hi/low power and talkaround are disabled. Pressing those buttons yields an error beep. At first I thought I had messed up the programming, but after playing with it for a bit, decided that is normal function.

So, both radios are properly programmed, and I have learned a good lesson or two. I am a bit frustrated that Motorola has stopped including a tutorial on the CPS disc and there doesn't seem to be a programming manual that I can find anywhere.

But thanks much for your help. It made all the difference.