New PSR-800 owner has some questions

[xmanchunian]

So I picked up a new PSR-800 last week, and I must admit that it is a very complex radio compared to my old Uniden 246T. Having said that, I do like its flexibility.

I have upgraded the EZ Scan Digital to the latest version and also upgraded the scanners CPU and DSP Firmware. I have also, finally, figured out how to program the radio. I am also using a replacement 8GB mini-SD card. .

I do, however, have some questions:
1. Whenever I attempt to update the mini SD card, the program complains that it does not see the scanner, but does see the SD card. The scanner is kept switched off. Should it be left on while connected to the USB port? It seems to work fine if the SD card is removed from the scanner and updated separately.

2. While using the conventional frequency scanlist; this seems to happen regardless of the frequency being monitored. The scanner seems to want to switch between FM-AM (or other direction) every 6 seconds despite the mode being set to one or the other in the conventional frequency scanlist. AUTO has not been used. The interval was measured using a watch so it is pretty accurate. I can see the switching attempt on the screen (the F changes to an A, or vice versa, very briefly). This is also coupled with a momentary break in the received signal. What am I doing wrong? The squelch setting does not make a difference and neither does the signal strength.

Thanks for your help.
A puzzled ham

 

[trap5858]

Hi, I am pretty new to the PSR 800 myself but I believe if you are updating the program with the SD card in the scanner, the radio must be turned on. I take the card out of mine and use a card reader/writer. I had read somewhere on here that this seems to work a bit better and there is less risk of the card become corrupt.

As far as the switching between AM and FM, I have not experienced that. I do use the auto feature for the type of modulation.

If you go to YOU TUBE and enter PSR 800 into the search you will find several very well done videos about using the unique radio.

Good luck and enjoy

 

[Sportster77]

If updating the card in the radio, it must be turned OFF during the entire update.

The switching sounds like you have the weather priority checked , so that the scanner goes to the National Weather Service channel(AM) to check for a signal every 6 sec. even if locked into a Conventional Freq. (FM). It can be turned off via the EZ Scan software.

 

[IowaGuy1603]

It is much easier to update the card in a card reader rather than doing so with the card in the scanner.

Its just one less thing to worry about


I use Auto............my scanner seems to find what is needed and uses the correct mode quite nicely

 

[wingmaker]

If updating the card in the radio, it must be turned OFF during the entire update.

Yes Fore Sure TRUE, you could mess up some stuff if its on, and dont press cancel during the copy to scanner I did when I first got it, corrupted the card big time, I just got new ones and all good then

The switching sounds like you have the weather priority checked , so that the scanner goes to the National Weather Service channel(AM) to check for a signal every 6 sec. even if locked into a Conventional Freq. (FM).

I didnt realize the weather channels were AM, I thought they were FM.

LOVE AND BLESSINGS Good Luck xmanchunian I hope you can figure it out

 

[Ed_Seedhouse]

Hi, I am pretty new to the PSR 800 myself but I believe if you are updating the program with the SD card in the scanner, the radio must be turned on.

No! Just the opposite, in fact. The scanner should be OFF. Fortunately the latest version of the PC software seems to be able to switch it off, and this helps a lot. Trying to update to the scanner card with the scanner on will corrupt the card, requiring a reformat. I've done that a few times myself.

 

[IowaGuy1603]

I didnt realize the weather channels were AM, I thought they were FM.

They are FM

National Weather Service Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference

 

[trap5858]

I stand corrected. Like I said I am new to this also. I do use a card reader to upload my program.

 

[xmanchunian]

New PSR-800 owner.. update

Thanks very much to all those who responded. Sportster77 tip was on the mark. I disabled the weather and the 6 second interruption to the signals disappeared. I am very happy about that. I have also checked out some of the YouTube vids as well. Great source of useful information. Thanks trap5858.

I have been upgrading using the SD card slot in my laptop together with a mcrosd adapter. Works well and no problems encountered. However the EZ Scan software still refuses to recognise my scanner. I know the connection is a good one, because the Win7 Device manager says that a GRECOM PSR-800 Serial Device is connected. I also attempted to reinstall the Firmware version U1.8 again (it is already U1.8), but I could not do that due to the scanners insistence that the CPU SW upgrade is waiting for the USB. Despite the fact that the scanner was connected to the laptop USB port.

Incidentally, is there a way of resetting the scanner? When connected to a USB3 port, the computer complains that the device (scanner) is malfunctioning.

Thanks,
A little less confused ham

 

[Ed_Seedhouse]

However the EZ Scan software still refuses to recognise my scanner. I know the connection is a good one, because the Win7 Device manager says that a GRECOM PSR-800 Serial Device is connected.

Unless you see a logical drive labeled EZSCANDG (with a drive letter following in brackets), when the receiver is connected to the USB cable and turned OFF, you do not have a good connection. Usual suspect is the cable. I'm on my third. Fortunately they are just bog standard USB connectors.

 

[Sportster77]

I didnt realize the weather channels were AM, I thought they were FM.

LOVE AND BLESSINGS Good Luck xmanchunian I hope you can figure it out

I didn't bother to check it, I was just trying to show an example of the priority switching, evidently the conventional freq. he is listening to is the AM.

 

[xmanchunian]

Unless you see a logical drive labeled EZSCANDG (with a drive letter following in brackets), when the receiver is connected to the USB cable and turned OFF, you do not have a good connection. Usual suspect is the cable. I'm on my third. Fortunately they are just bog standard USB connectors.

I discovered what the problem was. It was the EZ Scan software. I reinstalled version 1.04 from the CD, then updated it to 1.08. Everything is working fine and my scanner is now recognised by the software.

BTW, downloading and attempting to install 1.08 independent of the CD software caused a *.inf error. Upgrading the version 1.04 did not.

Incidentally, I did check all my USB cables (around 5 I think it was) and all were good.

Thank you everyone. My PSR-800 is now working properly! Incident closed.
Now to watch all those videos on YouTube and find a decent antenna...
A happy ham!

 

[kruser]

The only time the scanner should be on when hooked up for programming is if you select the Check for ALL updates in the EZ-Scan software.
it will tell you that when you click the check for ALL updates menu. Then if updates are available, EZ-Scan will attempt to switch the scanner off.
I've had this fail more than once though so I don't really trust the ALL check option. It is nice if it works and you needed CPU, DSP and library updates though as that one menu will get them all including updates to EZ-Scan itself.
There are other situations where you must switch the scanner on or hold the menu button down while plugging in the USB cable. That is only when upgrading the CPU firmware. The DSP firmware is done differently. eZ-scan will tell you what you need to do.
For doing just library updates, the safest and fastest for sure is with the card in card reader. I've still managed to corrupt mine in a external reader so now I always remember to use the safe to remove hardware option and select the card in the reader or the card in the scanner before I unplug the USB cable. The card for the GRE is picky and easy to corrupt more than any other data I've ever seen on any kind of memory card. It is not the card itself but something about the data that corrupts if you are not careful. I've corrupted the cards data on very high quality cards all the way to the cheapest cards money can buy. I've never figured out what is different about that data and any other data. I don't think I've ever corrupted any data on other cards that I use daily but I've sure corrupted the data on the card that holds my EZ-Scan database many times. Even using the cards I use for everyday use, I have managed to corrupt when I copied the EZ-Scan database to them. I don't figure it as it is just data just like the other data I will store on the cards.
And, it happens in a card reader sometimes and on multiple computers so that rules out a computer port problem. I've also switched cables from good quality name brands to the cheapest I can find but the card will still corrupt sometimes. I've been using a short cable lately as I'm using front ports on a desktop. The front ports on many desktops do have a short cable that connects the ports to the motherboard. I've seen those cables be made with unshielded cable before which did cause issues with all cards or devices. So I now use this little one foot cable which is a pain as the scanner must be within a foot of the computer. It is not easy to pull the machine out and attach a cable to a rear port that is soldered directly to the motherboard but I've had that work before when the front ports kept corrupting the card weather it was in the scanner or a reader. That was the one I found the unshielded usb cable within. Replacing it with a shielded cable and ports fixed that one for everything but the occasional EZ-Scan card corruption. I've always wondered if EZ-Scan itself does not perform a proper write kind of like some cd or dvd burners do when writing at the highest speed, they don't alter the die fully on the writable blanks which makes them unreadable in many drives. I've never found any evidence that that is possible with flash memory though. The bits are either on or off and no in between or partial change is possible but that is sure how they act sometimes and only when using EZ-Scan does the problem happen. I can copy the data from/to the SD cards all day with windows explorer or another shell and never have any corruption. Use ez-scan and I have corruption in or out of the radio.
As has been stated several times in this thread, the safest is using an external card reader/writer. Plus they are at least 10 times faster when done in an external reader as long as you have USB 2.0 ports or higher. When the card is in the scanner, it acts like it can only read and write at USB 1.1 speeds even though the scanners port reports to windows that it is a USB 2.0 port. I think it lies as that can be done easily with the firmware on the controller. I've done speed tests using a laptop with only usb 1.1 ports and a full card write took just as long in the scanner or a external card reader/writer as it did when hooked to a machine with usb 2.0 ports but the card in the scanner. Those speed tests confirmed in my mind that something in the scanner is limiting the speeds to usb 1.1 speeds as the transfer times were exact in all the tests. The only way to speed it up was to use an external card reader in a usb 2.0 or higher port. It will work with a reader in a usb 3.0 port also but not sure if the cards can reliably read and write at usb 3.0 speeds as I don't have a 3.0 external card reader. I'm making it sound worse than it really is as it does not really corrupt all that often but I have seen it corrupt with all hookup methods. In the scanner wins hands down for corruption though. Maybe I should try reading and writing other cards with the scanner as the card reader. Wait, I did that when confirming the slot in the scanner only runs at 1.1 speeds. From all my testing, EZ-Scan is the common object when I have corruption other than one time when I ejected the card by accident with the scanner on. I've always been able to fix the card by letting Windows check it for errors. It will find an truncated file in most cases and the card works again after it makes its repair. I've never trusted it though and end up writing the full database back to the card after corruption has been repaired by windows. It sure points to the ez-scan software as the problem every single time except for the time I had the cable problem.

 

[bfletcher]

Good job, xman. Enjoy your radio!