Kenwood TK-350 Programming

[bob-the-scanner-man]

I just got an old TK-350 UHF radio. The radio is in great condition and seems very rugged but it currently has some ancient UHF police frequencies programmed in and I want to get it set up for something else. I know I'll need a prog. cable from ebay and the radio software, already have both. I also have an old Pentium 2 (350mhz) computer with Windows 98 on it. I'm planning on making a DOS 2.2 boot disk(the Kenwood software is dos-based) and running the software that way. I know this is more of a compute question, but what do I need to do to run the program after I've booted to DOS 2.2? I've never messed around with DOS before so where on my hard drive to I need to put the Kenwood program so that I can run it from DOS?

I know this is more of a pc question, but I figured I'd post it here in case I need some other help with programming this rig.

 

[b7spectra]

I'm trying to remember back to a Win98 machine, but there should be a menu item called "RUN", click on it and type in CMD, that should bring you up a DOS window. Or, you could simply load the software and then click on the .exe file as it will open to a DOS window as well. You shouldn't have too much problem with it as I run an XP machine (1.2GHz) and program my TK830 & TK2/372's with it.

 

[bob-the-scanner-man]

I'm trying to remember back to a Win98 machine, but there should be a menu item called "RUN", click on it and type in CMD, that should bring you up a DOS window. Or, you could simply load the software and then click on the .exe file as it will open to a DOS window as well. You shouldn't have too much problem with it as I run an XP machine (1.2GHz) and program my TK830 & TK2/372's with it.

I may try that as well. I know one site I saw said it was best to make a DOS bootdisk and boot into true DOS by itself(like the old pc's from back in the day), apparently something about the Kenwood software didn't like being run through DOS in Windows.

 

[b7spectra]

A DOS bootdisk will work just as good! Don't forget to make yourself a ".bat" file, so it is easy to access your software. i.e.:

Directory of software is C:\Kenwood\KPG-23D\kpg23d.exe
Make your bat file:

md TK350.bat

edit TK350.bat

cd c:\Kenwood\KPG-23D
kpg23d

From then on, all you would have to do is type TK350 when you are at your c:\ and it will bring up the software!

 

[bob-the-scanner-man]

Awesome! Thanks for the help.

I'm ordering a programming cable from ebay tomorrow. Should be here by the weekend. I'll post back with my progress.

 

[bob-the-scanner-man]

I've got another question b7spectra. It's more of a pc question but I figure you'd probably know. My DOS bootdisk, DOS 6.22, doesn't recognize my C: partition on my old Windows 98 machine. It's formatted FAT32 but its 10gb so DOS won't recognize it.

Here's my question. If I'm using my DOS bootdisk in the CD drive can I run the Kenwood program from a floppy disk on my floppy drive? My old PC has both a CD and Floppy drive. This would be much easier than trying to create a new partition on an old and painfully slow machine.

 

[KB8KOJ]

Yes that will work. You can create a boot disk and then after booted into dos put in the floppy that contains Kenwood program. (DOS will stay resident in memory to execute KPG prog) Pretty sure that program will fit on a stripped down dos boot disk. Think I even have a boot disk with autoexec.bat for the program somewhere.

If you want to boot from floppy and then execute program from CD-ROM you will need CD-ROM drivers on boot disk. But you have some options.

Oh, another thing. Take a read from the radio as it sits. Save it in a safe location. Nice to have this!

 

[b7spectra]

I've used mine in a DOS window and it worked with no problem, give that a try. Motorola is pretty much the only picky software that I have ever come across.

 

[bob-the-scanner-man]

Got my cable and I cannot program the radio for some reason.

When I go to "Read from Radio" I get an error message that says "Check Radio Type". I've tried everything and can't get it to work.

Any ideas?

 

[bob-the-scanner-man]

Figured it out. I was using Version 1 of the KPG23D software and I needed to use Version 2 instead. It worked fine, and everything is programmed and ready to go.

 

[b7spectra]

Now it's time to rock and roll with your new toy!