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Downgrading Programmer to v16

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radioman2001

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Our shop has a duly licensed copy of programmer ver 16a05 also know as EDACS 4, and there is no reason to do any further upgrades to Programmer just for a few radios, and we do have RPM for our newer radios.
So now on to the problem, we got some M7100 800 mhz radios from our state surplus. I tried reading the radios and of course I get the dreaded "radio was programmed with newer version of Programmer" not the RPM error. I looked around and found information on how to downgrade from RPM to Programmer, but nothing about downgrading from one version of Programmer to another. I did read and save all the parameters, FEC, Flash, ADI/DSP and TRK files using programmer ver 16a. I then tried a standard recovery with the ver 16a boot loader and it failed after writing, I also tried recovery with the RPM boot loader and same result. Any ideas where I should go from here?
 
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Radioman96p71

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After the recovery you need to select to erase the EEPROM. Also, I'm fairly certain there is a limit to what radio code will work with older versions of software. If you can find the changelog of EDACS4 it will usually say what the minimum requirements are.
 

radioman2001

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I have made backups of all except personality because Programmer 16 won't read it. I have used the information at Downgrading from RPM to Programmer | NØMB Tech Blog to try multiple times to recover and it fails at the same spot. It appears to load both boot loaders programmer and RPM ok and then fails I don't get an option to erase. I just looked around and found an older BIN I may try that and then upgrade it.
I have confirmed by doing a lot of reading from different sites Programmer ver16 will handle up to J2R08A05, mine is J2R07A06 and the DSP that goes with this flash are the same as mine F4R06C05.

I will look up the change log, but per JungleJim(Google search) he states Programmer v16 should handle my Flash and DSP.

Doing more reading, I wonder if I need the boot loader from ver 17 or ver 18 to talk properly to the radio. Anyone have a copy they can share?

Quote:
"Probably time to give Harris TAC a jingle."

They are probably going to say buy another copy of Programmer the one that online registers. Don't need it for just 2 or 3 radios.


More searching reveals that I am on the right track, I will probably need the boot loader from ver 17 or 18.
 
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ElroyJetson

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DO NOT ASK ME FOR HELP PROGRAMMING YOUR RADIO. NO.
If you're going to be reprogramming the radios and don't NEED the original data in the radios to make the new program, just take the new program and write it to the radio.

So long as the radio's firmware has not been upgraded beyond the ability of your older version of ProGrammer to understand it, you can ALWAYS use an older version of programmer to write to a radio even if that radio was last programmed with a newer version.

I could use 18 and program your M7100.

I could then use 16 and program your M7100.

This is not like Motorola radios, where once you use the newer revision to write to a radio, ONLY that version (or higher) will read or write the radio.

Granted, you can't use 16 to read a radio last programmed with anything higher than 16, but you can still WRITE to that radio.

As long as the firmware in the radio is still compatible with the older release, that is.

BTW, upgrade to version 18. It's the last non-locked version of ProGrammer and as you are already
licensed, you can get that upgrade for free. It takes minutes and is worth doing.
 
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