NTN5763 DES-XL in a Saber III (german BOS version)

radio-link · Post by **radio-link** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 6:28 am

Hi!

I have put a NTN5763 into a Saber III, a special version designed for German police.

The radio powers up fine, in clear mode audio is OK, when trying to KVL it with a 3011dx the KVL shows something like "1 to 2", and when I send the key, the KVL says "passed". I assume this is something like putting keys into several slots?!

Anyway, the radio does not transmit in secure mode. Is this module not suitable in general for this type of radio, or am I doing something wrong? As up to now I only shot single keys into simple crypto modules, I have no experience at all with OTAR, shadow keys and other mysterious things :-)

And no problem at all, when you tell me it will never work, then I will accept this *g* Perhaps then there is somebody who would be interested in those modules and would like to swap them - I just need plain, simple single key DES or DES-XL modules for good old analogue sabers.

Thank you in advance for any hint!

Ralph.

Post by **akardam** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 7:28 am

The module you have is an OTAR module. There's nothing particularily special about it except that to accomodate an OTAR system the module is actually a multi-key module. Saber/SysSaber modules actually store the key(s) in the module.

So, when your keyloader talks to the module, it sees a multikey module, and that's why it asks "1 to 2", etc. To break it down, your keyloader has slots in it, starting with 0 and going as far as F if you have a DX keyloader. The OTAR module has an identical number of slots, numbered in an identical way. How many of those slots you actually use is usually configured by the RSS. However, the keyloader doesn't care, since it talks directly to the module.

What you want to do is to select on your keyloader, the key which you wish to load (let's say in slot 1), and when you push the ptt to keyload and it asks you "1 to x", you would use the keypad on the keyloader to indicate which slot in the module you wanted to load the key into. For example, if you wanted to load it into the first slot in the module (and again remember they start from 0), you'd press 0, then hit the PTT again.

Having said all that... as far as I can determine by looking at the Saber RSS manual, regular Sabers do not support OTAR, and thus have no way to configure which slot in the module it will use. My best guess at this point as to a resolution for you would be to try and load the key you want into slot 0 in the module, with the hope that the Saber is trying to access the first slot, and see if it works.

radio-link · Post by **radio-link** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 8:17 am

akardam wrote:So, when your keyloader talks to the module, it sees a multikey module, and that's why it asks "1 to 2", etc. To break it down, your keyloader has slots in it, starting with 0 and going as far as F if you have a DX keyloader. The OTAR module has an identical number of slots, numbered in an identical way. How many of those slots you actually use is usually configured by the RSS. However, the keyloader doesn't care, since it talks directly to the module.

Yes, this is how I was thinking it could be :-) The radio accepts slots 0 through 7, but even after loading them all with a key still the radio does not transmit in secure mode. So I guess the modules are not compatible with good old Saber, and I have to look out for other ones.

Thank you for your explanations!

Ralph.

Post by **akardam** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 8:50 am

No problem.

NTN5xxx modules, such as the one you have, are operably compatible with both Sabers and Systems Sabers. NTN4xxx modules, however, will only work with Sabers, not Systems Sabers. Found that out the hard way once... you put a NTN4xxx module in a Systems and the Systems won't post. A NTN5833 or NTN5835 module should work, or a NTN4712 or NTN4714. Those are all DES or DES/DES-XL single key modules.

More info here:

http://batboard.batlabs.com/viewtopic.php?t=26084

http://www.batlabs.com/encrypt.html

radio-link · Post by **radio-link** » Sat Feb 11, 2006 1:23 am

Aah, OK, they say there:

ALL of those (Multikey with OTAR) modules will NOT work in a Regular Saber.
Such as the NTN5761 and the NTN5763.

Bad luck, so I will have to find other modules :)

Post by **akardam** » Sat Feb 11, 2006 6:26 am

radio-link wrote:ALL of those (Multikey with OTAR) modules will NOT work in a Regular Saber. Such as the NTN5761 and the NTN5763.

Right. I'd guess that when a regular Saber tells the module to encrypt/decrypt something, it says, "do it!", which the single key modules do, but when it comes to the multi key modules, it says "gotta tell me which key, dummy".

Hmm... that's rather articulate for 0630 on a Saturday morning. :)