Batboard

I've programmed many radios before, but never a Spectra. It's a 900 radio, & I want to verify that the Hear Clear is off. I try to read the radio, & it's screen says program for a few seconds, & then says lost contact. The laptop then says multiple archives, select F2 for main, or F3 for auxiliary. Neither works. What's up with that? GARY N4KVE

I've never seen a lost contact msg in a spectra radio display before. New one on me. I suspect your laptop is running too fast for the rss.

I will jump on the band wagon with Bill and say your computer is probably too fast. You need to get under the 1 GHz clock with what ever means you can. There is a program on the Internet called "MOSLO PRO" that will fake out the computer and make the serial bus run slower. There is also another program called "CACHEOFF.COM" that may have to be run before starting any Spectra software. I use them both depending on the computer and clock speed.

You have to remember that the Spectra software was wrote back when computers were just hitting the 100 MHz clock speeds. There was nothing called a USB then. The hard disk drives used FAT formatting and the software all ran under a pure DOS control. They won't work inside Windows in a DOS window. As such, you need to run them in that environment.

Jim

I have to apologize in that I did not correctly explain my problem. That's what trying to cram a weekend at the Orlando Hamfest into 1 day will do. The laptop being used is a very old DOS machine. 10 minutes previous it was programming a HT1000. The screen in the radio said program for a few seconds, then the computer screen said lost contact. However, there are plenty of Spectra archives saved in it already. The Spectra is a black label radio, & a prime candidate for 902/927 use. Very high MLM, etc. The seller did tell me that to program the radio for me [which he did] he had to use a hacked program to enter the 902/927 freq's, but that messed up the pl tones. He then had to go back into the radio with non hacked software to set the pl tones right. Has anyone heard of this before? All I'm trying to do is see if hearclear is on, because my rx sounds mushy, so I'd like to turn hearclear off. If my hearclear is off, then I have other issues. Thanks guys. GARY N4KVE

Gary,

To program a Spectra on 900, you will indeed need to use hex-edited RSS. There is no reason why the seller needed to go back and use the unmodified version to enter pl tones. Do you need some archive files to play with?

This probably should be moved over to the 900 thread.

I appreciate the offer. Since I don't want to change any freq's, & just want to check if hearclear is off, [and turn it off if it is on] would I need hex edited software for that? I posted this here because there might be people who are familiar with programming the Spectra who have no interest in 900, & might not see this thread if I posted it in the 900 section. Thanks for all the help. GARY N4KVE

Gary,

Your RSS may be the problem, or the codeplug (archive file) may be the problem, your computer may just be too fast, or it could even be the combination of your computer, your RIB and RSS. Spectra RSS wasn't guaranteed to work on processors above about 120MHz as I recall. I deliberately stay with a DX4/100 to be safe.

I would start with properly edited RSS and move on from there. If the seller messed things up with lab there's no telling what's going on at this point. Check your PM.