Help With Motorola Programming Cable Question

[lls207]

Friday
November 1st,2013


Hello:
I have an HT1000 and a MTS200 FlashPort I am trying to program
I moved from Los Angeles to Old Hickory where I bought my first house on my GI Bill
During the move I had to leave my old towers I used from programming.
The Pensky truck was not big enough and I did not have the money to get bigger.
So, I want to know if I can use my laptop and the 15 pin plug.
That s all I have for input/output on the omputer.
So before I buy a cable with a USB on one end and the 15 pin male on the other...will it work?
And is there a 15 pin plug and a USB?
I've see other plugs, but not a fifteen pin male. There are three rows of five.

Thank you.
LLS207
OldHickory,TN.

 

[jcato16]

That's a vga monitor port, not a serial port.

 

[SteveC0625]

Friday
November 1st,2013


Hello:
I have an HT1000 and a MTS200 FlashPort I am trying to program
I moved from Los Angeles to Old Hickory where I bought my first house on my GI Bill
During the move I had to leave my old towers I used from programming.
The Pensky truck was not big enough and I did not have the money to get bigger.
So, I want to know if I can use my laptop and the 15 pin plug.
That s all I have for input/output on the omputer.
So before I buy a cable with a USB on one end and the 15 pin male on the other...will it work?
And is there a 15 pin plug and a USB?
I've see other plugs, but not a fifteen pin male. There are three rows of five.

Thank you.
LLS207
OldHickory,TN.

• All of the available ports on your laptop should be labelled in some fashion.
• It's your laptop, you can see the ports; we can not.
• If you can see the ports, you should be able to identify them.
• You should buy a cable that has an end on it that matches a port on your laptop.
• If your laptop does not have a serial or USB port, you're out of luck unless it has a PCMCIA in which case, you could try finding a PCMCIA to Serial card.

 

[jhutch62]

As an Amateur radio operator that's has programmed many MOTOROLA radios, USB to serial converters are unreliable at best, if at all. I've created my share of expensive paperweights. So unless your radio is designed to be programmed with a ribless USB cable, I would steer clear of it. What you need to do is find an old laptop with a 9 pin serial port (RS232) or a PCMCIA port for which you can use a serial adapter. These can be found on cragslist or ebay for literally a few bucks. I bought one on cragslist for 5 bucks, it's a 2000 Compaq Presario running Widows 95, and it works great. Also when it comes to laptops, in this case, the slower the better. Hope this helps.

 

[lls207]

As an Amateur radio operator that's has programmed many MOTOROLA radios, USB to serial converters are unreliable at best, if at all. I've created my share of expensive paperweights. So unless your radio is designed to be programmed with a ribless USB cable, I would steer clear of it. What you need to do is find an old laptop with a 9 pin serial port (RS232) or a PCMCIA port for which you can use a serial adapter. These can be found on cragslist or ebay for literally a few bucks. I bought one on cragslist for 5 bucks, it's a 2000 Compaq Presario running Widows 95, and it works great. Also when it comes to laptops, in this case, the slower the better. Hope this helps.

Thanks.
I do have a RIB and all the cables for Polaris Industries.
I got all that when I bought my first Motorola radio.
Great advise, did not think of it, but I will go to Craigslist and look for a....well I am not sure if I should buy a laptop or desktop?
Any advise, is there any difference in programming reliability between the two.
Thank you again.
Larney Sager
Old Hickory, Tn.

 

[lls207]

That's a vga monitor port, not a serial port.

Friday
2:10 pm

Thank you for writing.
I did know that was a monitor port as. I have hooked my laptop to my HDTV with a 15 pin cable.
What I did not know if I could use the monitor port to run DVD and reprogram my radios.
I guess I can't
Regards,
LLS207
Old Hickory, Tn.

 

[lls207]

• All of the available ports on your laptop should be labelled in some fashion.
• It's your laptop, you can see the ports; we can not.
• If you can see the ports, you should be able to identify them.
• You should buy a cable that has an end on it that matches a port on your laptop.
• If your laptop does not have a serial or USB port, you're out of luck unless it has a PCMCIA in which case, you could try finding a PCMCIA to Serial card.

Friday
2;13 pm

I do not think I made myself clear in my post.
I do know all the ports, there are very few in this Toshiba Laptop.
What I should have asked was can I program my radios using a RIB. And attach one end to the monitor port using a 15 pin male. The other end to a USB.

Sorry for wasting your time.
LLS207
Old Hickory, Tn.

 

[cmdrwill]

NO... you need a Motorola 15 pin to 9 pin cable to go from the Radio Interface Box, RIB, to the 9 pin serial port on your computer. The diagram IS on Batlabs.com so you can make your own.

http://batlabs.com/images/9pinrib.gif

 

[lls207]

Friday
6:00pm

I have everything I need as far as hooking up the MTS2000 to a computer.
My problem is I do not have any desktops.
My Toshiba Satellite, the only computer I have beside my IPad has one 15 pin female plug. I was told that is only for a monitor.
At this point I think my best best is to find a computer with windows 95 for my HT1000,
Now I need something to program the MTS2000. I think I used Windows XP, it's been like 30 months since I last worked on those radios....good think I have manuals, even though the FlashPort had a built in user guide.
Thanks,
LLS207
Old Hickory, TN

 

[jhutch62]

As for a desktop i.e. tower, monitor etc... or a laptop, both work equally well. I just prefer laptops because they're more portable and they have a built in battery back up in case of a power outage, and although you can get UPS power back up systems fairly cheap, it just means extra equipment you have to have, because there's nothing worse than programming a code plug and having the lights go out, but there are advantages to having a desktop, such as having the ability to swap out parts fairly easily, not to mention they're more readily available and usually cheaper than laptops. Since the mid 2000s the computer industry has been phasing out many of the standard connectors that we used to see on many laptops, such as serial, parallel, PCMCIA and firewire connectors, Nowadays even desktops are getting harder to find with these connectors, it seems the USB connector has become the industry standard. I guess the only thing I can say is work with what you have. I hope this helps.