Using Win 97, I uploaded my freq list and all's good now. But how did this error happen and how could I fix it if not at my computer? By reading the forum it sounds like the radio initialized itself??? How ???
This is why it is essential to have another scanner handy, WIN97 handy, or some means to reprogram your scanner.
Over the past 6 or so years, this has happened to me once. I run all the scanners below (more than one of most of them), and it was a PRO-97 that this happened to as well. It happened when I was changing power sources with the scanner ON. I still do this daily.
Having not seen the firmware, and knowing there are bugs in the firmware since prior versions of scanners, I can only GUESS as to what is happening. Keep in mind that my profession is largely writing complex firmware such as what runs these radios....
The scanner keeps track of what is locked out, what banks are enabled, and even what channel/frequency it was last on. That way when you power it down and re-power it, it picks up where you left off. This involves saving some parameters to non-volatile memory (EEPROM). This same memory contains all programmed information such as frequencies and alpha tags. If, when writing to this memory, something does not function correctly, it gets corrupted. When the scanner re-powers, it checks this memory, and it fails to meet some test, so it thinks nothing is programmed. When there is nothing to scan, all channels are effectively locked out.
I hope you understand this explanation, which is merely speculation on my part.