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ProGrammer Vs RPM pro's and con's

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merlin

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Been using ProGrammer near 2 decades, just wondering if it would be worth the switch going to RPM ?
 

Forts

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It all depends on your needs and what radios you are using. Beyond that.... If it ain't broke don't fix it certainly comes to mind!
 

merlin

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No needs, just tinkering. Programming is mainly for M-RK edacs 800Mhz and Jaguar 700pi, the later with provoice and AEGIS.
Another puzzle is I thought cloned radios with conventional were simplex and clear and could talk to each other, or do I need a system controller or repeater.
If the radios I have can't talk to anything, they are good as broke.
Just looking for differences in software. ProGrammer is nit-picky when it comes to specific radio types. no auto ID or such, that would help a lot.
 

TDR-94

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RPM doesn't afford any new features or programming changes over Programmer for those older radios. They will program exactly the same using RPM. They are just supported on RPM.
 

merlin

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What of the part ' Another puzzle is I thought cloned radios with conventional were simplex and clear and could talk to each other, or do I need a system controller or repeater. ' A number of radios I have are from the same system and thought some channels were talkaround.
 

Prospect62

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As long as you know how to create effective personalities, you probably won't need RPM. If by chance you need to read radios programmed by someone else who has used RPM, you might need to upgrade (although there are ways around it).

I've been getting by with Programmer just fine, if I encounter a radio that has been programmed with RPM (and therefore I can't read it) I just force my own personality to it with Programmer and it will take it and "downgrade" the radio back to Programmer. As has been said, there isn't really anything about RPM itself that is superior to the latest versions of Programmer. And I've never found Programmer to be "nit-picky" about anything if you take your time and know how to use it.
 

wa8pyr

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As long as you know how to create effective personalities, you probably won't need RPM. If by chance you need to read radios programmed by someone else who has used RPM, you might need to upgrade (although there are ways around it).

I've been getting by with Programmer just fine, if I encounter a radio that has been programmed with RPM (and therefore I can't read it) I just force my own personality to it with Programmer and it will take it and "downgrade" the radio back to Programmer. As has been said, there isn't really anything about RPM itself that is superior to the latest versions of Programmer. And I've never found Programmer to be "nit-picky" about anything if you take your time and know how to use it.

Ditto to the above. If Programmer works, there's no need to spend the fairly large sum of money to upgrade to RPM. Apart from a few minor differences they're both basically the same.

Most of my older stuff around here (M7100, P7100) uses RPM, but those are going away; the system we run on will be implementing Radio Authentication, and Harris has stated they have no plans to do a feature upgrade to add that to the older radios (x7100, x5100, etc). Once those are gone RPM2 will be the only Harris software I need to fool with.
 

merlin

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My latest batch of M-RK radios show MRKII and programed with a later version of programmer (RPM?)
Sadly my version of programmer has no option for 'new personality' . No problem rolling back the radios otherwise.
 

merlin

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Another issue is this version of programmer (18B) claims to work on a channel to channel basis but can't find this feature anywhere in the program.
If only a user manual for programmer was available.
 

carcarjg

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My latest batch of M-RK radios show MRKII and programed with a later version of programmer (RPM?)
Sadly my version of programmer has no option for 'new personality' . No problem rolling back the radios otherwise.
Odd my R18B showed it. I use R20C and RPM14C now....So I might not be correct but I'm fairly certain its there.
 
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