Hello Gunny,
I feel your frustration and anyone on this forum recalls just how they felt being in your position. I bought my 996t in July and played with it for 4 months until I felt that I could ask a sensible question. I had a 895XLT for 19 years. It finally gave up the ghost and I was forced into the digital age. I had no idea where to start.
Someone gave me a hint here; the same hint I'm going to give to you.
marksscanner.com
This person has deciphered all of the gibberish of your Bearcat scanner owners manual and made it a clear, concise and easy-to-read tome. Yes, you are going to have to learn a new way to scan now as well as learn. There is a learning curve---sometimes, especially at the beginning, it's shape like a bell curve.
There are some very helpful people on this forum, but no one can program your scanner for you. That's your job and that's part of the learning process, as you will see. I know, I know, you want to get your scanner up and running asap! So did I and so did we all. However, there are steps that everyone must take to learn the basics. It's your job now.
You may say, "...why can't anyone just take me through the steps who owns a scanner like I have?"
I can't answer that; perhaps someone will. I can tell you that the best learning experience I had was noodling it out for myself. After 4 months, I had an idea of what I was doing THEN I asked my questions. They were responded to and everyone here was a great help.
Get your software set up and just program the scanner. You probably will make a lot of mistakes along the way, but that's good! We need to learn from our mistakes, build upon what we have learned and move to the next step.
Don't permit yourself to get frustrated! Read, learn then do as you are guided.
Here is the first post I made after taking the necessary time it took me to learn about the scanner I have. You're likely to be younger than I, so it may not take you 4 months!
https://forums.radioreference.com/scanner-programming-software/341770-system-programming-996t.html
Keep us informed of your progress.
I'm 68 years of age---if I can do it from scratch, you can do it too!
