Batboard

I am hoping someone can help me out, I know little about radios and happened to find this board. Right now I work for a PD (and was issued an old baulky portable radio) and am a paid on call EMT for a fire dept (with no issued radio, just a pager). 3/4 of our officers have HT1000's, with only the like least 4 senior people carrying the old baulky radios. In checking online I found that HT1000s are pretty inexpensive (which is suprising cause I think they are sweet radios), so I bought one (our dept is switching to 800mhz digital in a year so they won't purchase us new VHF radios for those of us with the old style ones). In researching online, I found that I can buy a cloning cable and just clone one of our police dept radios. My problem though is that although the police dept radios have the main fire channel, they don't have the TAC channels that are used at a fire scene. Are there any other options for programming so I can carry a police/fire hybrid radio? I see on ebay there are cables that connect the radio to the computer but I am assuming you need software to program it. Our dept uses a radio shop to program/fix our radios but from what I hear they charge an arm and a leg. Is there a simple way I can program a hybrid setup of police and fire to my new radio or is it just easier to clone a police radio and be without the TAC channels? I am going to call the radio shop when I work on monday to see what exactly they charge.

Thanks!

To program the HT1000, you'll need an old, slow computer (no faster than a 25 MHz 80486), a RIB (Radio Interface Box), the appropriate RIB to radio cable and RIB to computer cable, and the proper RSS (Radio Service Software).

At this point, I'd like to take the time to point out a basic rule of the board here, just in case you missed it:

DO NOT!!!! ask on the board for RSS!!! Sorry for the emphasis, but Motorola is very touchy on the subject, and we don't want the board shut down/sued by the Moto legal team.

With that out of the way, perhaps there's a fellow Batlabber close enough to you that's willing to program it for you. Otherwise, if the local radio shop charges more than around $30 to program it, they are ripping you off. Myself, and I'm sure several other members, would be willing to program it for you if you ship it to us.

Yeah, I think for now I will just clone one of the department radios and go without the TAC channels. I didn't know there was so much involved in programming it. Thanks for the reply.

I may be able to assist you. Where in MN are you located?

East metro