R1800 R1801 suitcase programmer

[wazzzzzzzzup]

what is the difference between the two? i have done alot of searching, sometimes people use either term for what appears to be the same thing, batlabs only has info on the R1801


im interested in learning about the old methods Motorola used in the beginning of the non crystal days.
i understand 1 or both of these could program radios, pagers, PL SCAN and MDC chips with the appropriate adapters.

also, where does the program for the adapter reside, say you want to program a syntor X or non X (or other prom), is the "program" for lack of a wider description located in the adapter or do you take apart the suitcase and plug the "program" chips in? not to be confused with the blank prom (if you can even find them anymore) that plugs into the front of the adapter.



wazz

[Bill_G]

I don't know the difference between an 1800 and 1801. We had an 1800 that liked to break down.

There was a board that stored a number of the program chips. We added a zif socket so we could load other programs without having to take the thing apart. You turned the power on, waited for it to boot, and selected your program reading from a small two line VFD screen. You used a set of simple commands to access different functions, set your values, and wrote them to a prom. And you hoped you got it all correct.

[Andy Brinkley]

See link below for more information:

http://www.brinkleyelectronics.com/prog ... _equip.htm

IIRC the difference between the 1800 and the 1801 was the 1801 had an added 4K of extra memory.

[wazzzzzzzzup]

you have some very nice pictures of the R1800! i see yours has some electronics in the lid, is that where the program chips are for the various radios it will program? and the 4k upgrade you mention, what additional features would that allow, or what radios will a 4k memory 1801 do that a 1800 wont?

[WB6NVH]

According to the '83 Test Equipment catalog, the R-1800A was the basic DAC, the R-1800A/M same but with extra 3K RAM, while the R-1801A was "with reader programmer" and R-1801A/M added an extra 3K RAM to that. In 1983 anyway. I think there was higher capacity RAM available near the end of production.

But...not sure what that "reader-programmer" option means. The panel in the upper lid is marked "Reader-Programmer" and that's what the description says is the optional item. So...if you had a bare R-1800, and it didn't have that, then where would you put the PROM to be programmed? And does that mean the R-1800 only programs PROMs, and won't read them?

I just have the R-1801A so I don't know what an R-1800 looks like.

[wazzzzzzzzup]

what does the 83 test equipment catalog show the price for both 1800 and 1801 variants go for?
and what were the new prices for the common program adapters such as the MX300S and the MSF5000,
and finally what were the price of the eeproms that contained the programming info for said adapters?

[Andy Brinkley]

Also for anyone with more than a casual interest in the R1801, I have a Yahoogroup dedicated to the R-1801. You can access it at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Motorola_R-1801/

It has sporadic activity and any Bat Labber is welcome to join.

[WB6NVH]

By 1983 Motorola had quit putting prices in the Buyer's Guides and the catalogs. You had to use the appropriate price books to find the price, and there were different books depending upon who you were (with different prices, of course.)

I have the '83-'86 price books (I think) but it will take me awhile to find where I put them and then I'll post back here with the prices.

[wazzzzzzzzup]

what are the memory chip part numbers for the R1800/1801 memory upgrade?

[WB6NVH]

OK...per the 1985 Price and Availability List for end users:

R-1800A $ 2985
R-1800A/M $ 3085
R-1801A $ 3400
R-1801A/M $ 3500

The /M refers to extra 3k RAM installed.

PROM modules ranged from $ 68.00 -96.00

The RPX 4257A 3K Memory Expansion kit was $ 125

The Application Program Kits (ROMS) were $ 124 each, using the Syntor X as an example.

[DJP126]

The R-1800A and the R1800A/M would not program or read any proms (you needed the R1801A or R1801A/M for that). There were programs for troubleshooting trunking radios and personality boards and encoding paging formats to test pagers.

The maximum memory capacity was 4M. There was in development an option board to increase memory, add capacity for additional programs, add more I/O ports and add IEEE488 and RS232 capabilities but the series was killed (in favor of pc programming) before the board went into production.

There was also an R-1821A and R-1821A/M which was the same as the 1801 but the reader/programmer was mounted on top of the keyboard panel and hardwired into the I/O ports.

[WB6NVH]

Thanks, Dave, that's what I was thinking but I am new to this product and am still learning about it.

[wazzzzzzzzup]

i found this picture in my searching, this unit has the adapter mounted on the top, is this the R1821A? or is it something else?

[techie]

IIRC, The memory chips in the R-1801 were standard 2114 1kx4 SRAM. 6 are needed for the 1k->4k upgrade. They are still available for ~$1.50-2.00 each, if you don't have any lying around.. they were used in a bunch of things including Commie-64's, arcade games, etc..

I scored a 1801 off of ebay about a year ago for a steal (~$50, half of which was shipping.. )
I had 4 2114's in my parts bin, and picked up another pair at one of my local e-surplus shops for a couple of bucks. Now I need to get around to building the eprom adaptor

[DJP126]

i found this picture in my searching, this unit has the adapter mounted on the top, is this the R1821A? or is it something else?

This is the R-1821A (or R-1821A/M depending on the amount of memory).

[wazzzzzzzzup]

i was looking on the batlabs R1801 page and noticed the line
SYNTOR PL 6881122E90 2WAY RTL-4803A/B RTL-5818A/B

i have a VHF syntor, and its PL board uses SIP's with pre printed PL code on them, was a special prom board made for PL?

[Andy Brinkley]

The Syntor was available with a multi PL tone board, it uses an N82S135 prom to store the tone info

[wazzzzzzzzup]

what is the command to get the R1801 to scroll thru all the installed program chips, and is there a common set of names used to select each program? as an example, what command brings up the syntor program?

[Andy Brinkley]

/L causes the R1801 to scroll through the list of installed firmware proms.

SYNTORF is the frequency firmware for the original Syntors
SYNTORX is for the Syntor X radios

[K1SIX]

I actually did some "coding" for the R1800 back in the old days. Back then, some special apps were developed that allowed trunked Syntor series radios to be programmed off-the-shelf for fast delivery to our customers in need. The development platform was called "MOBUG" which I also developed. I actually had the R1800 decoding CW and auto adjusting to speed via a homebrew interface to a Drake R4C back in those days.

Retired ex-MO Systems Engineering after 40.5 years.
Regards,
Bob, K1SIX

[K1SIX]

So, the program firmware for each particular application resided in a custom programmed EPROM on a board in an array with other EPROMS on a circuit board. The adapters that you would plug in would simply allow you to program a BLANK PROM destined for a targeted radio. The unique name for each firmware EPROM was encoded as ASCII characters (HEX) near the lower address range within the chip and the /L List function simply scanned through all the chips (Firmware EPROMS or ROMS in some cases).

Regards,
Bob, K1SIX

[DJP126]

See link below for more information:

http://www.brinkleyelectronics.com/prog ... _equip.htm

IIRC the difference between the 1800 and the 1801 was the 1801 had an added 4K of extra memory.

Sorry Andy. The difference is the R1801A has the reader/programmer board. The R1800A is just the lower section of the suitcase. The 4 meg memory added the /M suffix to the model #.

[DJP126]

I actually did some "coding" for the R1800 back in the old days. Back then, some special apps were developed that allowed trunked Syntor series radios to be programmed off-the-shelf for fast delivery to our customers in need. The development platform was called "MOBUG" which I also developed. I actually had the R1800 decoding CW and auto adjusting to speed via a homebrew interface to a Drake R4C back in those days.

Retired ex-MO Systems Engineering after 40.5 years.
Regards,
Bob, K1SIX

Welcome to the board Bob, nice to here from you. If you remember, I was the service tech in the Test Equipment Service Center that had to repair those boxes and help the field techs with "How do I do this" calls. Also don't forget the \T command to check out the lower part of the suitcase.

[kcbooboo]

Perhaps one of you guys can help with a mystery in the R1800/1801 User Manual.

One page lists the available special keyboard keys:

RETURN (CR) Menu Item Selected Data Entered
ESCAPE (ESC) See Note 1 See Note 1
BREAK See Note 2 See Note 2
LINE FEED (LF) Next higher menu item Cursor moved to the right
BACK SPACE (BS) Next lower menu item Cursor moved to the left
SHIFT <something> Not allowed Same as LINE FEED
SHIFT <something> Not allowed Same as BACK SPACE
CTRL-D Not allowed Deletes a character at cursor position and shifts in a zero or a blank
CTRL-I Not allowed Inserts a zero or a space at cursor position
CTRL-X Not allowed Blanks out or zeroes out a string
... a few more keys are listed here...

The 6th and 7th lines: SHIFT <something> have no printable characters next to them. I'd like to know what keys or characters they're referring to. Are these SHIFT LF and SHIFT BS or something else?

Thanks.

Bob M.