This is a tough one. Not much info. available. I have the programmer schematic, frequency plan (FCC), the programming software, etc. But this is a trunking radio - it doesn't like non-trunked stuff. Just today, after a year's worth of research, I got a pair of them working simplex.
As you may or may not know, the trunking units wait for a response from 'daddy' before they'll go key-down. So that was the first hurdle - get TAC working. Done... I'm still learning about these beasts, so can only offer what I've discovered thus far... You probably know most of this already... They are designed to TX below 900, RX in the 935 range. TAC puts the TX up into the 935 range. So, from the TX perspective, these units could easily do 900 ham frequencies. The programming software wants an FCC channel number, then (apparently) the radio translates that into a frequency. I'm not sure about this part just yet... Could be that the software does the translation and ships the result to the radio... Not sure... If you don't already have it, you need the programmer and the software. At least at that point you can get into test mode. Once in test mode, you can adjust squelch, encode/decode levels, etc. Plus, you can get simplex up and running. The test mode data is firmware within the rig - so you can program all you want - break it 9 ways from Sunday - but if you invoke test mode, that data is still right there! This one saved my butt!!! Please advise if I can help at all. RELM has only one guy that knows this radio and the programming software, so, obviously, he's swamped!!! I have a good dialogue going with him, and have nearly all of the stuff that Uniden issued for this particular model. Building a programmer is key. You gotta go do that!!! The Uniden programmer is over $300... I built mine for maybe $10 tops... The circuit uses a MAX-232 chip, 3 2N2222 type transistors, and a run- of-the-mill PNP transistor. Also a 5v regulator of some sort... A few resistors, a few caps., you're done!!! The software wants to run under DOS. NOT a DOS window - PURE DOS. I tried it from numerous versions of Windows, and on numerous PCs. NOPE!!! Boot up via DOS 6.22 and run from a floppy! Trust me - it will save you DAYS' of work!!! I debugged my programmer 4 times before deciding to try the floppy route. Days and days wasted!!! At this point, after a year of fighting with these guys, I'm thrilled to have a signal on the air, anywhere!!! So now, the issue becomes how to move them into the ham band??? According to RELM, there's a data stream issued upon transmit. And, the receiver is looking for a particular data stream as well. There are over 2000 possible combinations. If you're looking to put up an analog squelch type repeater, you're probably going to have to go to the innards of the rig and circumvent the rig's squelch processing - firmware... For a repeater, that's easy - tap the discriminator and build an external COS circuit. I tried this today: Keyed up a different rig on a 900 channel, and then tried to key up the Uniden on the same freq. It refused to go. It also DID NOT open the squelch! So, the receiver is seeing the 900 signal, but the squelch processing is refusing to open the squelch. Hence my recommendation to pick a signal off of the disc. and process it externally. The next oddity is that there's an odd offset built in. 38.9MHz... My freq. counter confirms. And RELM confirms. So, the freq. meter reads 10KHz off from the FCC assigned frequency. Go figure. Now this only happens under certain programming parameters, and this one I still don't understand... I programmed channel 15 into one rig and it came out on the assigned freq. of 935.1875. I ADDED channel 15 to another rig and it came out on 935.1865!!! I reversed the radios, programmed again, etc. --- all day long today - and STILL got these odd results. I finally gave up tonight and programmed both of them back to channel 15 ONLY, and they're BOTH on the assigned freq. according to the freq. counter. Go figure... There's something in there about the group, home repeater, TAC channel, something - that causes the offset to occur. Wish I knew what it was !!! Anyway, if I can help with the software, schematics, FCC channel assignments, etc., please advise. Now what I don't know, and what we ALL LOVE to know, is how to get them into the ham band! They'll go below and above, so it is either reverse- engineering the programming software, or getting into the radio and changing the tables that are in the PROM in there, or inserting another uP in there (as they had to do with the Motorola MTX-900)... At the moment, I can't say which will happen. My first guess is that the programming software needs to be hacked as it won't take anything beyond the FCC assigned frequencies. That tells me that the software has a translation table that could be edited... This is VERY old code - 1980's-1990's... Written for XT and AT type PC's... I no longer have all of those low-level programming tools. But the first thing I'd do if I did, would be to crawl through the built-in table and modify it. An educated guess is that one could get the radio to take ham frequencies. I'm almost positive that the "cramp" is the programming software itself. 73, Dave. --- In [email protected], "kf4vgx" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Need programing information on this radio to setup as a repeater. > > Any information is appreciated. 73 John >
