ElroyJetson
Getting tired of all the stupidity.
I've written this up based on my own VERY troublesome experiences in trying to set up a fully functional, DOS RSS compatible programming laptop computer recently.
It was a PAIN.
in the process, I found out how to ease the pain.
You probably know that if you want to be able to program Motorola's legacy radio products from before the days where everything ran on Windows, you need what is by today's standards a very old, and very SLOW, laptop computer. I say laptop because most people prefer them. The advice I'm going to give can also apply to desktop computers. I recommend that any radio shop should have a dedicated radio programming desktop in addition to laptops for field use.
I'm not going to get into the configuration of a DOS laptop that you want to use for RSS programs, but I will
address the issues I ran across when I tried to get one running recently.
I started out with several possible candidates, all 486 or Pentium class Toshiba Satellites, which are easily identified by being entirely grey.
What I found, without getting into the boring details of every test and every failure and every workaround, is that by this time, you can expect that MOST physical media drives that work on these old laptops have failed. Or they will soon.
Floppy drives, no luck. I STILL have yet to find a single 3.5" floppy for this laptop which still works.
I had similar issues with the CD ROM drives. (The laptop had Windows 95 on it. which I would point out, is important for running the CD ROM. While it's possible to install DOS drivers to run a CD ROM, that is an exercise for YOU to pursue, not me. I was eventually able to find a working CD ROM which allowed me to quickly transfer my DOS RSS collection to the hard drive.
And I started having problems with the ancient hard drive.
It ended up that all my problems were related to the failure of physical media drives.
The solution: Virtually ALL laptops up until recent years have one or two PCMCIA slots.
For just a few dollars, you can easily obtain a PCMCIA to CF card adapter which allows you to transfer all your files from computer to computer on CF cards and ditch floppies forever.
But that's only half the solution. The other half relates to the problem of finding a working, SMALL capacity hard drive that is compatible with these older laptops.
The answer is another elegant little piece of low cost technology: An IDE to CF card adapter. They cost about seven dollars.
Put a tiny little 4 GB CF card into an IDE to CF card adapter and suddenly you have what is functionally a solid state hard drive for a 25 year old laptop.
But of course, you will have to install DOS (And, I suggest, Windows 95 as well) to your new improvised IDE SSD. Installing Windows is desirable as it makes file management much faster and easier. Even if you use Windows for no other reason, it's nice to have it there.
Another option is to find a vintage copy of Norton Commander, which was easily the best file management software running under DOS that anybody ever made.
As long as your laptop will recognize the memory card in the PCMCIA adapter and it also recognizes the IDE to CF card adapter as a hard drive, (and it should), then the only thing you have left to worry about is make sure that your computer has a working serial COM port.
Now that you have the essentials of a RELIABLE DOS PC for radio programming, you need a means to transfer the files. Fortunately, many computers have built in CF card readers and if not, USB CF card readers cost pocket change. And that's all you need.
Now that you've found an archive file somewhere on the internet with all 128 (or whatever) DOS RSS titles in one huge zip file, all you have to do is unzip it to a CF card, transfer the CF card to the laptop, and start installing and copying over the individual programs.
You will need to have a certain familarity with DOS commands. And I suggest you learn what AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files do and how to modify them.
If you have a LOT of RSS titles to install, I suggest you learn how to create batch files and menu systems, all of which are easy to construct in DOS and very useful as well.
Once all this is done, you don't ever have to worry about a hard drive or floppy drive failing on your programming laptop ever again. You're rocking the equivalent of an SSD on a computer made in the 90s. That seems to be quite futuristic.
The new projected lifespan of your upgraded laptop is until something in the power supply gives out. And that is very repairable, particularly if it's repaired BEFORE it fails completely.
It was a PAIN.
in the process, I found out how to ease the pain.
You probably know that if you want to be able to program Motorola's legacy radio products from before the days where everything ran on Windows, you need what is by today's standards a very old, and very SLOW, laptop computer. I say laptop because most people prefer them. The advice I'm going to give can also apply to desktop computers. I recommend that any radio shop should have a dedicated radio programming desktop in addition to laptops for field use.
I'm not going to get into the configuration of a DOS laptop that you want to use for RSS programs, but I will
address the issues I ran across when I tried to get one running recently.
I started out with several possible candidates, all 486 or Pentium class Toshiba Satellites, which are easily identified by being entirely grey.
What I found, without getting into the boring details of every test and every failure and every workaround, is that by this time, you can expect that MOST physical media drives that work on these old laptops have failed. Or they will soon.
Floppy drives, no luck. I STILL have yet to find a single 3.5" floppy for this laptop which still works.
I had similar issues with the CD ROM drives. (The laptop had Windows 95 on it. which I would point out, is important for running the CD ROM. While it's possible to install DOS drivers to run a CD ROM, that is an exercise for YOU to pursue, not me. I was eventually able to find a working CD ROM which allowed me to quickly transfer my DOS RSS collection to the hard drive.
And I started having problems with the ancient hard drive.
It ended up that all my problems were related to the failure of physical media drives.
The solution: Virtually ALL laptops up until recent years have one or two PCMCIA slots.
For just a few dollars, you can easily obtain a PCMCIA to CF card adapter which allows you to transfer all your files from computer to computer on CF cards and ditch floppies forever.
But that's only half the solution. The other half relates to the problem of finding a working, SMALL capacity hard drive that is compatible with these older laptops.
The answer is another elegant little piece of low cost technology: An IDE to CF card adapter. They cost about seven dollars.
Put a tiny little 4 GB CF card into an IDE to CF card adapter and suddenly you have what is functionally a solid state hard drive for a 25 year old laptop.
But of course, you will have to install DOS (And, I suggest, Windows 95 as well) to your new improvised IDE SSD. Installing Windows is desirable as it makes file management much faster and easier. Even if you use Windows for no other reason, it's nice to have it there.
Another option is to find a vintage copy of Norton Commander, which was easily the best file management software running under DOS that anybody ever made.
As long as your laptop will recognize the memory card in the PCMCIA adapter and it also recognizes the IDE to CF card adapter as a hard drive, (and it should), then the only thing you have left to worry about is make sure that your computer has a working serial COM port.
Now that you have the essentials of a RELIABLE DOS PC for radio programming, you need a means to transfer the files. Fortunately, many computers have built in CF card readers and if not, USB CF card readers cost pocket change. And that's all you need.
Now that you've found an archive file somewhere on the internet with all 128 (or whatever) DOS RSS titles in one huge zip file, all you have to do is unzip it to a CF card, transfer the CF card to the laptop, and start installing and copying over the individual programs.
You will need to have a certain familarity with DOS commands. And I suggest you learn what AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files do and how to modify them.
If you have a LOT of RSS titles to install, I suggest you learn how to create batch files and menu systems, all of which are easy to construct in DOS and very useful as well.
Once all this is done, you don't ever have to worry about a hard drive or floppy drive failing on your programming laptop ever again. You're rocking the equivalent of an SSD on a computer made in the 90s. That seems to be quite futuristic.
The new projected lifespan of your upgraded laptop is until something in the power supply gives out. And that is very repairable, particularly if it's repaired BEFORE it fails completely.
