BC246T: BC246T, Freescan and Windows 10

This might be a long shot, but I'm wondering if anyone is using a PC with Windows 10 to program / control a BC246T? If so, where did you get the drivers needed for the cable?

As I recently said in another thread, I've pulled my 246 out of mothballs to use for mostly conventional frequencies, but may want to program in a couple of trunked systems as well. I spent about 75 minutes yesterday evening manually programming about 60 ham radio frequencies, including alpha tags, in to the scanner. I have a butt-load of other conventional freqs to program in, so I figured I'd download Freescan and use it for easier programming of the scanner.

I thought I had the proper driver(s) installed on my PC, but when I got everything hooked up and tried to upload to the scanner, I got an error message saying that no available COM ports can be detected. When I open up the Device Manager, I see the the little yellow "error" triangle, so I know something isn't right.

So, I'm hoping someone else has encountered this problem and found a solution they would be willing to share. I spent about 90 minutes working on this and am "this close" to throwing either my computer or the scanner across the room into the wall.

Any comments / tips / suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Many thanks in advance.

It's not a BC246 issue. Here are some discussions about Win 10 issues:
Connecting scanners via USB - The RadioReference Wiki
http://forums.radioreference.com/uniden-tech-support/317887-windows-10-uniden-usb-driver.html

captclint said:

It's not a BC246 issue. Here are some discussions about Win 10 issues:
Connecting scanners via USB - The RadioReference Wiki
http://forums.radioreference.com/uniden-tech-support/317887-windows-10-uniden-usb-driver.html

Click to expand...

Thanks for the links. I'll check them out and see if any on the information there will help. If not, I suppose I could always pull my old Windows 7 desktop computer out of mothballs and see if it still works with Freescan and my 246. It did a couple of years ago....when I last used it.

I suspect you have an old USB-1 (or other USB-to-RS232) adapter. Unfortunately, due to rampant pirating of their chip design, the chip vendor changed to a newer version that is not compatible with current drivers. We changed to the newer chip in the USB-1 several years ago. There are some workarounds, but we only support the current cable under Windows 10.

UPMan said:

I suspect you have an old USB-1 (or other USB-to-RS232) adapter. Unfortunately, due to rampant pirating of their chip design, the chip vendor changed to a newer version that is not compatible with current drivers. We changed to the newer chip in the USB-1 several years ago. There are some workarounds, but we only support the current cable under Windows 10.

Click to expand...

Yeah, my cable dates back at least 5 or 6 years. That could explain why nothing seems to work, even after checking out the links captclint provided.

I'll be hooking up my old Windows 7 machine later on today to the 246 and see how things go with it.

Sorry, I had that a little upside down. The newer version drivers are only compatible with the current chipset.

I have BCT15X just got it, has the old serial cable, went out and got the serial to usb converter and it came with the disc. No issues on Win 10 with Freescan.

Well, the old Win7 machine is up and running and, I must say, running better than I thought it would for something that hasn't been used for over two years.

I connected the 246 to the computer, opened up Freescan and after a couple of tries getting the correct com port assigned, was able to download to the computer what I had already programmed in by hand, so it looks like I'm (back) in business.

Now comes the (much easier) task of fully programming the 246 for use. I did find a couple old 246 files on the computer, but they won't be much help to me since that programming was for when I lived in Illinois.

Thanks to everyone who chimed in with comments/links/suggestions. They are appreciated.