BIG trouble programming PRO-137

[jlochey]

Group (experts),

I have just picked up a PRO-137 that looks very promising.

I have also purchased the ARC137 software to program it.

I have two cables to use with this unit, the 20-047 and the 20-546.

I cannot get this scanner programmed for anything!

I have tried on Windows XP and on Windows 7.

Everytime, I just get "no scanner found at this com address"...

Any ideas?

Also, if I have to program this scanner manually (agony), will I lose the memories during a battery change? In other words, is the memory scheme non-volatile?


Thanks a lot!



John
KC8JDI

 

[mjdewey]

Check and change your com port until you find the right on and it should work.

 

[WA1ATA]

The frequencies and tags are stored in non-volatile memory so you won't lose any info if you remove the batteries.

That also applies to the extra stored memory banks that initially come filled with NASCAR race freqs.

Manually programming is not a painful as it looks like at first. The store didn't have the cable, so I just sat down and in entered about 200 freqs and tags. I did it in two or three sessions of about 30 minutes each.

 

[jlochey]

Thanks for the help!

I have tried COM ports COM1-COM7, to no avail...

But I'll keep pecking away at it.

Any idea what cable to use of the two that I have? Or are they both identical?

I may just return the cable and program it by hand. Can't be that bad. ; )


Thank you WA1ATA and mjdewey for your help!


John
KC8JDI

 

[Eng74]

Did you load the drivers for the cables?

 

[KC5EIB]

I have tried COM ports COM1-COM7, to no avail...

But I'll keep pecking away at it.

Any idea what cable to use of the two that I have? Or are they both identical?

I may just return the cable and program it by hand. Can't be that bad. ; )


Thank you WA1ATA and mjdewey for your help!


John
KC8JDI

Open the device manager, look under COM and see what com port the computer assigned to the cable.

 

[jlochey]

I have loaded the drivers and can see that it is at COM 3, but I do not see in ARC137 where I can or should also change this(?).

Are the two radio shack cables the same?


Thanks!

 

[nanZor]

Use the 20-047 for the Pro-137. You can use it just as it is without the additional mono adapter jumper.

ARC137 will just automatically scan for the right com port when you attempt to read or write to the scanner.

You did load the driver software first, and then attached the hardware? Otherwise you might have to remove some generic usb driver that got installed instead if you performed this operation backwards. Also check that you are plugging into a direct usb-port, and not a port that hangs off a hub..

Great analog scanner. Since I'm not into racing that much, I just re-purposed the CAR button to be a way to do "number tags" in Uniden speak, but for the most part ignore it.

 

[nanZor]

That also applies to the extra stored memory banks that initially come filled with NASCAR race freqs.

An interesting trick even if you are not into racing, is to incorporate / repurpose the features for normal scanning. For example, since the first two banks can be preset and pulled from ram, you can have a variable "2-bank" (1 and 2) personality of sorts when you fire up in addition to the other normal banks.

In other words, since you can load and store the first two banks on the fly, I just cleared them, and stored my own freqs depending on interest instead. Although if I do that, I have to remember that "Nextel 500" is really filled with say airband freqs. Tomorrow, I might want additional fire freqs so I'll load them as some other race.

Normally I don't use the 137's preset / store and load feature that much, but it's nice to have it even for non-racing use. Just wish I could change the names of races.. Oh and milair. and ....

 

[WA1ATA]

Just wish I could change the names of races..

The race names get automatically changed to match the tag you have assigned to the channel bank you are storing.

Change the tag of the channel banks using item 2 of main menus.

Then when you store the channel bank to the preset race memory, the "race name" will be automatically change to whatever you had for the bank channel tag.

------------------------

The ability to reload from race memory isn't limited to channel banks 0 & 1. You just have to first upload into 0 or 0 & 1, and then copy to the desired final destination bank.

From the main menu 2GM CH Bank, select a bank and enter program. In the submenu that opens up you copy the bank to any other bank.

In other words, although the race memory banks are only linked to 0 or 0/1 bank, you can just use bank 0/1 as a temporary transfer point. Then you just reload 0/1 out of race memory.

Once you understand the organization and do it once or twice, it takes much less time to do than to explain it.

----------------------------

I find the 1000 freqs is more than enough, even after adding things like all of the marine VHF, GMRS/MURS, AAR railroad, and common dot/star and local control frequecies; but would like to have more banks. Sometimes I want to listen to lots of local freqs. Sometimes I listen to just a few. Rather than play around locking out channels all the time, I duplicated my 5 or so favorite freqs into one bank and leave the other 95 empty.

 

[nanZor]

Wow - thank you! It is like I woke up to a whole new scanner!

Then when you store the channel bank to the preset race memory, the "race name" will be automatically change to whatever you had for the bank channel tag.

Outstanding. What stopped me here before was although I changed the race name, say to AIRSHOW1, when I went to store it, the old name was highlighted, ie "Champ Car". I just needed to follow through far enough to allow it to take. Sure enough, now if I try to load a race back in, AIRSHOW1 is there instead.

This alone made my day.

The ability to reload from race memory isn't limited to channel banks 0 & 1. You just have to first upload into 0 or 0 & 1, and then copy to the desired final destination bank.

Gift #2! I never thought to do that either. Works great.

In other words, although the race memory banks are only linked to 0 or 0/1 bank, you can just use bank 0/1 as a temporary transfer point. Then you just reload 0/1 out of race memory.

I never thought of using it that way as a temporary transfer point. Now I can really customize it.

Thanks again - this little 137 is even more useful to me now...

 

[lpharper]

Just picked up 2 Pro137 and I am getting the message about scanner not found. Have changed the COM Port through Device manager many times with no luck. Is there any sequence on the radio to make the programming software work. When I plug in the cable the scanner comes up in CLONE mode. Any Ideas ? Thanks

 

[MarkToney]

Just picked up 2 Pro137 and I am getting the message about scanner not found. Have changed the COM Port through Device manager many times with no luck. Is there any sequence on the radio to make the programming software work. When I plug in the cable the scanner comes up in CLONE mode. Any Ideas ? Thanks

lpharper,
I'm in a similar situation. It is normal for the scanner to come up in clone mode until it is spoken to by the scanner software. It will then say "WIRED PROGRAMMING MODE" or something like that. I have been unable to get ARC137 to find and speak to my scanner. Automatic detection of com port is all jiffy if it works. Having a manual selection so I could tell it COM11 (in my Windows 7 PC's case) would be handy, but doesn't seem to be available in this software.

I downloaded the demo of ScanCat-Lite-Plus (which does let you specify com port) and was able to read from my scanner into the software. The demo does not let you save files to disk or write to scanner, but it was a confidence boost that the drivers, cable, etc. was all working.

I searched for help on sovling this non-communication problem for ARC137 and found nothing. I guess I'll purchase another product that I have seen working. Too bad--ARC137 looked like a nice product (though it hasn't been updated in a while).

 

[nanZor]

I searched for help on sovling this non-communication problem for ARC137 and found nothing. I guess I'll purchase another product that I have seen working. Too bad--ARC137 looked like a nice product (though it hasn't been updated in a while).

I tested this situation on Com11 and got ARC137 demo to work, so there might be something else going on.

I'm using the 20-047 cable with Windows 7. I also used ftdi drivers mentioned in this thread:
http://forums.radioreference.com/sc...162-20-047-cable-driver-install-problems.html

Although this doesn't explain why ScanCat Lite seems to work. Are you using the same cable when testing ScanCat Lite and Arc137? Are you using the same USB port to test with?

For me, it shows up as Com4. To change the port to 11, I went into the advanced tab of the device manager for the port and changed it to 11. I ejected the usb port safely, and then plugged it back in to make sure it was really thinking it was on port 11. Port 11 is usually a shared virtual irq, and usually means that there is a lot of other stuff hanging off of port 3 and 4 to begin with.

Yep - when I told ARC137 to read the scanner, this time it skipped over Com4, and when it reached Com11, it read from the scanner.

Returned all settings back to normal.

I'm no computer expert so I can't explain why it is not working on your system, when it is on mine.

 

[MarkToney]

Yes, I am using the same 20-546 cable, driver, etc. for ScanCat Lite that I tried with ARC137. After getting ScanCat Lite to work, I shut it down and started ARC137, but ARC137 still didn't work.

There is some other device that says it has COM4 "in use" in device manager. I don't want to uninstall drivers trial-and-error to determine what has that COM port in use. I told the USB-to-serial driver to claim COM2 (not in use), but that didn't help. I was just wishing I could tell ARC137 where to look since I know the port and it can't seem to figure it out.

You're probably right--it has something to do my my computer's configuration. I'm not willing to twist my config in a pretzel for the possibilty (not assured) of getting ARC137 to work. Thanks for the information.

Mark

 

[nanZor]

Well, the good news is that you got me to upgrade to the 20-546 cable to make sure we were on the same page. The Cd wanted to install all this demo software (and probably the driver in between), and I couldn't find the directory listed in the pamphlet.

So I crossed my fingers, created a restore point, and attached the 20-546. Amazingly, windows update pulled down the windows 7 ftdi serial drivers for me. That's a first!

Well, we know that ARC137 is indeed capable of finding COM11 on it's own - I've seen it hunt down my system with COM11. Yet ScanCat lite has no problem with COM11 on your side of things, so what's the diff?

Maybe it isn't hardware related at all - are you running ARC137 with Full Administrator Priveleges? I noticed that on the Butel site, they mention this as being necessary for any ARC software with Vista / Win7.

Beyond this, I don't know what to tell ya.

 

[tonyclark]

http://rsk.imageg.net/graphics/uc/rsk/Support/ProductManuals/2000137_PM_EN.pdf

 

[MarkToney]

Maybe it isn't hardware related at all - are you running ARC137 with Full Administrator Priveleges? I noticed that on the Butel site, they mention this as being necessary for any ARC software with Vista / Win7.

Yes, I ran ScanCan as administrator and ran ARC137 as admin as well. I wish I knew the difference. It's my guess that ARC137 is finding another COM port before COM11 that it believes "should be" a scanner. Once it can't communicate with a scanner there, it shrugs and gives up. (This is supposition only on my part.) If I were working on a clean install of Windows 7 without the accumulated drivers & garbage of 1.5 years of using the computer it may work great. Since I'm not willing to break lots of other stuff trying things, I'll just move on.

Thanks for putting some thought into it and the suggestions,
Mark