Batboard

Greetings Batboard!

I found a couple of old school MTX900s for cheap and I know that they need to be both software and hardware mods have to be made. The article that I found used a pickstick for the hardware is there any newer / more available way ? or has every one just given up on them? It does not make much difference to me as I have other 900 MHZ radios to work with.

Thought I'd reply to this very old post since I just saw it. I'm the one who created the mod you mention. The reason there is no "new/more available way" to get these radios to work on the ham bands is because the microprocessor has internal ROM that will not work onamateur band frequencies. It has an internal lookup table that takes the desired programming frequency and looks up the values to program the VCO and only the values for commercial frequencies are present. Since you can't reprogram a factory ROM device and change the lookup table you are stuck. You can mod the programming software to TRY to program the radio and the radio will take it but it will still be be in the commercial band.

So, since the radios microprocessor cannot be re-programmed the solution was to translate the VCO info it puts out to frequency in the ham bands which is what the Pikstick and firmware does. There really isn't any other way to do it unfortunately. Anyway, the MTX900 makes a good, robust HT for the hambands but, of course there are easier, more modern solutions. If you want to have some fun with it, PICStics are still available from MicroMint, Inc. for a few bucks however any 16F84 or 16C84 based board will work as long as it's small enough to fit inside the case of the MTX-900 and PIC programmers are widely available and dirt cheap.

Cheers,
Ron Curry
N6QL (Formerly KE6WED)