Batboard

Made a major breakthrough today. Been playing around trying to get my fast (1.87 gig clock) laptop to
interface with the older DOS programmed radios. Bought the "moslo delux" software and finally found
the correct combination of settings to make it work.

You will need to boot into DOS. I did this with an external USB floppy drive with a DOS boot disk. Next
problem was the laptop hard drive was not in the FAT32 format that DOS needed. So though for a while
and then put the RSS files on a CD. Used the same file structure of MRSS\SPECTRA and the like. Don't
forget to put the archive files there too if you want to reload a saved codeplug.

I start the computer up from the floppy boot. Change the drive to the cd and then tell it to change
directories to the one I want. I have placed a copy of the "moslo.com into each of the radio directories
that I want to use. So the next command is "moslo.com /n /8.0 spectra.exe" and away you go. You may
have to play around with the speed setting (/8.0) to match your computer speed to something the
program and radios like. Takes some effort to find the high and low setting speed to where it works and then
set it in the middle. I had the speed setting set higher, but found that a couple of radios would throw
a serial bus error sometimes, so dropped it back some.

Maybe this is the answer to all of us having to save all those old 286 and 386 computers.

I have tried it on a low band Syntor X9000 and have got the program to work on that radio also. The
settings are different than the Spectra. But hey, it works.

My gut feeling is that I may just take one of the laptops and re format the hard drive back to FAT32
and then reload all the software. Would save the problem of not being able to write to the CD.

Jim

Jim202 wrote:I have tried it on a low band Syntor X9000 and have got the program to work on that radio also. The
settings are different than the Spectra. But hey, it works.

Including reading and writing to the radio and control head.. reliably? That would be a major breakthrough. Also, is this with caching disabled in BIOS?

FWIW, I use an IBM Thinkpad A22m (1 GHz Intel P3, 512 MB RAM, XP SP3/DOS 6.22 dual-boot) that will talk reliably to everything up to and including analog Sabers/System Sabers and STXes.. but not Syntor X9000s.

I can't speak for the syntor but as for everything else I have no problems using a Panasonic CF-18 at 1.1 Ghz. I used the HP usb boot flash utility to format it and make it bootable. http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197

Then, just keep the files on the usb drive and run them from there. I use a cheapo 1 Gig and that's been more than enough room for a ton of DOS RSS applications and files.

The only other step involved is that with the Panasonic PC you have to go in and tell the bios to boot from USB but that's a simple process.

Moslo works with the Syntor x9000. It does have a glitch with it though. You may have to get it to read mor than one time to get the info off the radio and same goes when you program it, but it does work.

I think my stick is 64mb or 128, it even says motorola on it lol. For you guys dual booting, I hope your not using the MS boot selector, this is actually part of windows and can cause problems even when you boot to dos. I'd feel safer using grub bootloader or using the usb stick, dells seem to have the easiest time with this, works with an older D630?, dimension 4600, and a dual core latitude (less than 6 months old) using the HP tools. I read, program, and align HT1000's with 100% success, I havent had the opportunity to try the really old crap.

Winger2002 wrote:For you guys dual booting, I hope your not using the MS boot selector, this is actually part of windows and can cause problems even when you boot to dos.

Such as? I have yet to see a read/write fail on any of my dual-boot configured machines that wasn't clock speed-related.

motorola_otaku wrote:

Winger2002 wrote:For you guys dual booting, I hope your not using the MS boot selector, this is actually part of windows and can cause problems even when you boot to dos.

Such as? I have yet to see a read/write fail on any of my dual-boot configured machines that wasn't clock speed-related.

It was just a thought for you guys trying the really old stuff, I work in public safety and anything that old is taken out of service and destroyed, so good luck with the dual boot method.

It's a non-issue. While you're technically correct in that it's a native part of the NT OS, the actual booting process doesn't involve Windows at all, unless a Windows OS is chosen. You can see more details here:

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/principles.htm

So, if DOS is chosen, only DOS is loaded. I've programmed several thousand radios with a dual-boot configuration on multiple computers, with no issues whatsoever. In fact, I don't recall seeing a post here in the last 10 years in which anyone had an issue.

I've been experimenting with sort of the same process, made a bootable CD with the image thats bundled with Nero that boots a version of DR-DOS with USB support, with a bunch of RSS programs on the same CD, and I've had limited success, some programs work, Maxtrac, RadM100, SM50, SP50.....while others like GM300, MTSX, GTX, LCS, just error out and close saying there isnt enough memory, I think a few pop up and say you need "atleast 640k memory to proceed" and I cant get moslo working, I have moslo.com in the main directory for the software but when i try to execute it, it just hangs and does nothing....

This could have some value in tinkering with, some bugs to work out, on my end anyways, the reason I was doing this is because I got a mint CF-28, with the carrying case, AC cord, instruction manual still sealed, just minus the hardrive and caddy haha....but I have been able to program a few radios with it using this method....another good reason i wanted to get this working is because if my DOS machine ever died, temporarily anyways, this is something I could just pop into another machine to get me by....

edit, A few of the kenwood programs I play with will work too, as well as vertex, Tait PGM2020 wont however, not enough memory....

You will note that I was very specific in stating that I used "moslo.com pro" and not the
version that has been around for years that you can download on the network. Makes
a big difference which version your trying to use. The pro version allows you to set a
number of parameters to get the computer to function differently. You might have to
just sit there and try different combinations until you fine one that works. Don't
forget to reboot the computer every so often, as it seems to get hung up with some
of the settings if you don't.

There is also a small program called "cacheoff.com" that is needed on some of the
computers to turn off the computer cache. I have used it on some of my older
programming computers without the moslo having to be used.

Jim

VE9MP wrote:I've been experimenting with sort of the same process, made a bootable CD with the image thats bundled with Nero that boots a version of DR-DOS with USB support, with a bunch of RSS programs on the same CD, and I've had limited success, some programs work, Maxtrac, RadM100, SM50, SP50.....while others like GM300, MTSX, GTX, LCS, just error out and close saying there isnt enough memory, I think a few pop up and say you need "atleast 640k memory to proceed" and I cant get moslo working, I have moslo.com in the main directory for the software but when i try to execute it, it just hangs and does nothing....

This could have some value in tinkering with, some bugs to work out, on my end anyways, the reason I was doing this is because I got a mint CF-28, with the carrying case, AC cord, instruction manual still sealed, just minus the hardrive and caddy haha....but I have been able to program a few radios with it using this method....another good reason i wanted to get this working is because if my DOS machine ever died, temporarily anyways, this is something I could just pop into another machine to get me by....

edit, A few of the kenwood programs I play with will work too, as well as vertex, Tait PGM2020 wont however, not enough memory....