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I am currently looking to program a Visar using an early Pentium Win98 machine.

I was planning on using a DOS bootdisk BUT I cannot access the C: drive to run the RSS when I use the bootdisk.

Visar RSS is also too big to fit on a floppy (its the Euro 5T version not the HT1000 stuff).

I guess I could copy the Visar RSS onto a CD?? Or use the "MS-DOS Mode for Games with EMS and XMS support" trick or learn how to dual boot or swap HDD's and load pure DOS. (I've searched the archives for all these ideas).

However , I do have an old Thinkpad 700 which is a 386 running Windows 3.1

Is Windows 3.1 equivalent to pure DOS - so I could just select the "close 3.1 and run MS-DOS" option (or whatever its called)?

Thanks

g8tzl2004 wrote:I am currently looking to program a Visar using an early Pentium Win98 machine.

I was planning on using a DOS bootdisk BUT I cannot access the C: drive to run the RSS when I use the bootdisk.

Visar RSS is also too big to fit on a floppy (its the Euro 5T version not the HT1000 stuff).

I guess I could copy the Visar RSS onto a CD?? Or use the "MS-DOS Mode for Games with EMS and XMS support" trick or learn how to dual boot or swap HDD's and load pure DOS. (I've searched the archives for all these ideas).

However , I do have an old Thinkpad 700 which is a 386 running Windows 3.1

Is Windows 3.1 equivalent to pure DOS - so I could just select the "close 3.1 and run MS-DOS" option (or whatever its called)?

Thanks

A number of people, including myself get into DOS mode by pressing F8 at bootup, the selecting option 5 "command prompt only" from the selection to get to the basic DOS prompt outside of windows. I've programmed several radios including the US version of the VISAR from a pentium class computer running windows 98, using the above method with complete success.

-Josh

there's something wrong if you can't get to the c: drive from a boot disc. after it starts up from a boot disc it will leave you at a: when you are there just type c: and push enter and it will take you to c:

Windows 3.1 runs under DOS. The computer actually boots up in DOS and runs Win 3.1 as a program, so you can close and restart Windows just like any other DOS program.

A number of people, including myself get into DOS mode by pressing F8 at bootup, the selecting option 5 "command prompt only" from the selection to get to the basic DOS prompt outside of windows. I've programmed several radios including the US version of the VISAR from a pentium class computer running windows 98, using the above method with complete success.

-Josh

I use this method on all my programming pc's, works great. I've also got a couple pc's that I have stripped the dos components out of windows 98, and they dual boot win xp and ms-dos 7.0, which is the unreleased dos that 98 runs on (what you get when you select command prompt only). Allows you to see FAT32 drives also.

you can also edit the autoexec.bat file to keep the computer from loading windows on startup.

escomm wrote:you can also edit the autoexec.bat file to keep the computer from loading windows on startup.

That would be best for the win 3.1 machine, as when you exit win 3.1 it leaves stuff in memory. Remove the win command from autoexec.bat and then you can run windows by typing win at the c: prompt.

g8tzl2004 wrote: I was planning on using a DOS bootdisk BUT I cannot access the C: drive to run the RSS when I use the bootdisk.

This is because the DOS 6.22 bootdisk cannot recognize FAT32 drives, merely FAT. You need to use a Win98SE or WinME boot disk to see them. Once you do that, things should run fine.

g8tzl2004 wrote:Or use the "MS-DOS Mode for Games with EMS and XMS support" trick.

I can give this method my full support, simply because it's never failed me, even when boot disks & using the "F8 - command prompt only" option did. I should qualify that by stating there are computers out there which don't work simply because of hardware issues, the Games mode cannot solve that, but neither can the others. Try it, you won't be disappointed.

Todd

You can go up to Windows98 and program HT1000/Visar/JT just fine, even in Windows/"DOS Box" (at least my machine does). I've had no problems.

Thanks for all the great feedback.

To cut a long story short , I used the Win 3.1 386 Thinkpad 700 ($2 from a junk sale) and it worked great !!! After booting up , I just selected "Exit Windows" , got the C: prompt and loaded the RSS.

Using the early Pentium Win 98 Thinkpad 380XD , I kept getting "communication with radio failed ...> Timeout error <

I tried a couple of the tricks with the WIn 98 laptop with no success ie.
- MS-DOS Mode for Games with EMS & XMS
- 6.22 Bootdisk -[ BUT I should have used a Win98SE Bootdisk to access C: drive - thanks]
- "F8 command" - I rebooted 5 times but could not get the F8 command to work. Kept getting keyboard error - I know that I was pressing F8 too soon - but I never did get it just right!!
- even tried DOS within Win98!!!

My Visar is a European 5 Tone version which uses the same RSS as a GM900/GP900. It does not use the American HT1000 RSS. A few years ago I had similar problems programming a GM900 - none of my usual laptops worked - thats when I started using an old Toshiba pure DOS 486 laptop (which I don't have access too at the moment). At the time I think I had established that the European GM900/GP900/Visar RSS had some issues with the serial port UART.

I have a final question. The RSS is the latest version (R06.06.00) but I used a "fully opened" version - I did not use a compressed version where you run the "install" command. Does anybody know whether the "install" routine helps to "match" the laptop to the RIB/radio??

Thanks

g8tzl2004 wrote: I have a final question. The RSS is the latest version (R06.06.00) but I used a "fully opened" version - I did not use a compressed version where you run the "install" command. Does anybody know whether the "install" routine helps to "match" the laptop to the RIB/radio??

Nah, it doesn't. Not sure why it wouldn't work for you on the Pentium, but I have no experience with European RSS either.

Later-model IBM Thinkpads are weird about working with DOS RSS. I have a Thinkpad T23 with PIII 1.13 GHz processor.. it required a dual-format with a FAT partition running DOS 6.22 to get anything to work. Also, the serial port wasn't initially enabled in the BIOS, so that's something else you can check.

If you have the problem again, try this: install the RSS on the C: drive normally, but instead of running it in Win98 DOS 7.0, boot from the Win98 bootdisk, browse over to wherever the RSS is stored, and try running it again. I had the same COM Port error BS on my T23 prior to dual-partitioning, but booting from the Win98 bootdisk and running RSS worked for some reason.

Ah, now that the BIOS has been mentioned, I also recall several posts stating the IR port needed to be disabled in the Thinkpad BIOS before COM 1 would work properly.

Todd

My early Pentium (MMX 166MHz) Thinkpad 380XD is defaulting to the COM 2 port. I just set up the RSS to use COM 2. This works great on Windows CPS stuff.

Does the Visar RSS need to use COM 1??? There is the option to change the COM port in the Visar RSS so I'm guessing that using COM 2 is still OK ?

I recently increased the RAM from 32MB to 64MB on the Thinkpad 380XD - will this have any effect on causing the RSS not to work??

Re. IR vs serial port. I also use a Thinkpad 600E PII running XP - by default the IR is enabled and the serial port is disabled. Because the 600E is not really designed for XP (Win 98 etc) , I could not enable the serial port within WIndows. I had to run an IBM P/S.exe DOS utility to switch off the IR and enable the serial port - but it now works great !!

g8tzl2004 wrote:I recently increased the RAM from 32MB to 64MB on the Thinkpad 380XD - will this have any effect on causing the RSS not to work??

Not at all.. in fact, RAM is one thing you can upgrade on old "RSS-friendly" computers that will actually improve its operation. Spectra RSS, for example, won't completely work on a machine with only 8 MB of RAM; if you're programming a trunk system, it'll stack-overflow and crash when you get to the control channel screen. Or at least that was my experience.

g8tzl2004 wrote:Does the Visar RSS need to use COM 1??? There is the option to change the COM port in the Visar RSS so I'm guessing that using COM 2 is still OK ?

No, it doesn't need Com port 1. It does default to Com port 1 when installed though. If port 1 doesn't work, then change to port 2 in RSS.

You have a choice for a reason. Older machines usually had a dial-up modem or some other piece of hardware using Com port 1 by default also. Frequently, there would be a conflict and a computer crash if more than one or two pieces of hardware were trying to work off of the same Com port, thus you may select between 1 or 2 (and even more in some cases) to avoid problems...