Saber 2 8K Eprom Channel Expansion

[N6LAU]

Hi. I have a Saber 2 that is currently programmed for 48 channels with the Omit Memory 2K option enabled. I know that it has an 8k eprom in it as I have opened it up and saw the five chips on the eprom board as well as the extra 3 pin ribbon that connects to the speaker/mic assembly to the eprom board. I've tried disabling the Omit Memory option with no success and have even tried to create a new personality for it with 120 channels. When I go to write the radio the RSS tells me that I'm trying to program an 8k personality into a 2k radio and aborts the attempt. It seems to think the radio only has a 2K board even though I know it has an 8K. Is there something I'm missing here? Is there a way to utilize the 8k board for a full 120 channels instead of the 48? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Joe
N6LAU

[N6LAU]

Nevermind, I figured it out.

Joe
N6LAU

[Tom in D.C.]

Joe,

Please post how you solved this. I'm having the same problem. Once upon a time I
was able to convert S1s to S3s but somehow I lost my "touch" so please clue us in
on the secret.

Thanks.

[N6LAU]

Hi Tom. Basically I just used an older version of RSS to do it. I already knew that the board was an 8K board from visual inspection and that it would be capable of 120 channels. Getting the RSS to think that was a different story. I was originally using version R07.01.00 which is the newest version of the Saber RSS I believe with a release date somwhere around 1994. It wouldn't let me remove the "Omit Memory 2K" option in the radio feature options and even when I created a new personality without the mentioned option enabled the write attempt would abort and tell me that I was trying to program a personality that exceeded 2K basically insisting that the radio was only 2K. I then tried an older version of the Saber RSS I have which is D04+/-10M with a release date in 1989. This version let me do it no problems. Just read the radio, disabled the "Omit Memory 2K" option, wrote the radio and that was it. I should note that this version of RSS is a little more flexible than the newer RSS and will even let you take the Saber out of band by a few megs. I do have another question that is a little off-topic. If you switch out Saber recievers between a 458-490 split radio and a 440-470 split radio will the reciever have to be realigned to work properly? Thanks.

Joe
N6LAU

[Tom in D.C.]

Joe,

Thanks for the advice on the program change; I'll check the settings before I try to
do the changeover the next time.

On the tuning, the radio should work in the middle just fine, but at either end you will
have a dropoff in sensitivity that will make the radio pretty deaf.

About the Saber RSS version,I've probably owned and set up fifty of them and I've yet
to acquire one that was programmed when I got it with version 7. Everyone seems to
have been using version 6 over the many years of the Saber's popularity.

Regards,