Batboard

I picked up a KawaMall USB to RJ45 Maxtrac (and others) ribless programming cable.
I was able to install the driver that comes with it and set it for COM2.
I also set a shortcut on the desktop to maxtrac.exe and right clicked/properties and played with the memory etc settings (but there are a LOT of settings)
Maxtrac ver 7.02 RSS comes up fine and the missing com port message no longer comes up but I get a "Attempting serial bus recovery" message, then "Radio must be powered up etc" error when reading the radio.
It is a newer HP running XP home edition.

Any experiences using this cable????
Any experience using CACHECHK.EXE v7 ??

Please PLEASE do *NOT* respond telling me what to use for programming!!
I have working platforms, I just wanted to experiment with this.

Max-trac wrote:
Please PLEASE do *NOT* respond telling me what to use for programming!!

I have working platforms, I just wanted to experiment with this.

Ok, I won't tell you that you're using the wrong computer to program a maxtrac. I will tell you that maybe this should have been placed in the "Radio Programming Hardware and Software" forum

correct me if i'm wrong but maxtracs and gm300's and those radios are programmed with rss that need to be run in dos,not a dos box in windows. how are you getting dos to see the usb port? you might be able to get it to work on a cdm1250?

HLA wrote:correct me if i'm wrong but maxtracs and gm300's and those radios are programmed with rss that need to be run in dos,not a dos box in windows. how are you getting dos to see the usb port? you might be able to get it to work on a cdm1250?

Exactly. Anything that ends with RSS needs to be in pure DOS to work.

how are you getting dos to see the usb port?

It is a Prolific USB device, after installing the driver you go to the device manager and it shows up as a COM port. Then you can set it for the COM1 port (the same as the RSS is set for).
Now the RSS no longer has the com port missing error, so things are looking promissing.

He has a long list of radios this is supposed to work with (including Maxtrac) so I have to believe it works with some setup.
I know it was a chance I took and may not work, but I am experimenting here.

I'm familiar with the Prolific USB/Serial adapters. The Prolific chipset is used quite widely, delivering itself into the bad pun of having a name that describes its ubiquity.

Anyway, you're trying to put a round peg into a square hole and hoping it will work. The problem that other people have been trying to explain to you is that RSS of any flavor, and in this case the Maxtrac RSS, is a native DOS application. Yes, it may start up under Windows in a DOS box, and yes, it may even see the COM port under Windows in a DOS box, but the vast majority of the time it will not read/write successfully.

So, as has been said many many times before, RSS needs to run directly under DOS, as that's what it was designed to do. But, there are no DOS drivers for the Prolific USB/Serial adapters that I'm aware of, so it likely ain't gonna work under DOS.

If you can get the entire kit and kaboodle to work successfully under Windows, all the more power to ya. Just don't cry when you brick a radio with the getup.

The kawamall cable seems to work just fine for CPS based apps and the newer CDMs, etc.

I have never reliably gotten it to read/write to a maxtrac.

The maxtrac software is looking SPECIFICALLY for a piece of hardware to control. It does NOT derive its control functions from the O/S, but rather the bios. The RSS was written when 8250s and 16550s were the only serial port chip available. That being said, most RSS is interrupt and hardware driven.

You will have almost zero luck programming those types of radios with anything other than a DOS based O/S.

(unless you are into VMware and are a Linux geek - like Akardam! )

If anyone is interested, I still have some brand new, never used 80286-16 motherboards, with all the supporting hardware if anyone wants to build a REAL DOS machine.

That is the best approach for RSS. Buy or build the correct machine, and have enough hardware around to support it for the next decade, then send it to the Wang museum.

Maxtrac,

Read through the DOSbox thread below:

http://batboard.batlabs.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=38552

Myself & several others have had great success using a modified version of DOSbox v0.65 to read/write Maxtrac style radios on many different XP based computers. It even allowed me to use a PCMCIA serial card for the programming, which I couldn't use in regular DOS due to no available drivers. It should in theory work for you too. PM me your email address & I can send you the files.

Todd

Speaking of 80286 boards, I once long ago (mostly just to see if it would
work) set up an 8088 to program a Saber. You could almost
literally fall asleep waiting for the system to complete its steps
but, dammit, it worked fine and probably had a "bricking probability"
of about .00000007.

Tom in D.C. wrote:Speaking of 80286 boards, I once long ago (mostly just to see if it would
work) set up an 8088 to program a Saber. You could almost
literally fall asleep waiting for the system to complete its steps
but, dammit, it worked fine and probably had a "bricking probability"
of about .00000007.

Lol, we had a Toshiba 8088 laptop at one point..."cigarette smoke yellow" plastic, 11-inch monochrome display, no hard drive...had to run everything off of the big old floppies...weighed about 25 pounds, what a beast.

just a tip...i bought a radio interface box from said vendor a while back(3yrs), and had to replace the ic on it before it would work. after that it worked well. either a static or soldering issue. no experience with your setup though, just the vendor. good luck;~)
dan