ProScan: Programming BCD436HP w/ Proscan

emsflyer84

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Mar 22, 2012
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Hey all, I finally picked up a 436hp today and and very impressed out of the gate. I bought from a local Ham Radio Outlet which is about ah hour from my house, typed in the local Zip and immediately I was getting everything in the area. Police, fire, EMS… it was great. So I got it home and started to program it with Proscan like I’ve done with my 325P2’s in the past. Got the hang of programming using favorites and spent a few hours getting all the frequencies in the software. Went to upload to scanner and hit a few roadblocks. First, the scanner has a serial port, but no serial cable. No problem, I had a spare cable and connected to my PC. Couldn’t seem to get it to communicate with PC. Swapped out the serial cable for the charging cable. Got it to communicate and the graphic in the Proscan software was showing what the scanner was showing. Perfect. Went to “write to scanner” and I got an error message. Something to the effect of “must select a line”. There was nothing to select. I could not get past this, it’s like the scanner wasn’t being recognized when trying to write my programming file to it. I don’t have the specifics now because I’m not at my computer, but I assume it has something to do with putting the scanner in the correct mode “mass storage, usb, etc”. Can anyone point me in the right direction here? When I turn on the scanner when it’s plugged in, it asks me to make a selection regarding USB mass storage. I never press anything and let it time out and start scanning. Should I be selecting something there? Thanks all.
 

emsflyer84

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Press the E... put it in mass storage mode!!

Basically, the computer mounts the SD card... you can even see it in file explorer. This is required to write to the radio.
Thank you! So what’s the deal with the cables? Do I use the serial cable to program? If not, what is the serial port for?
 

nessnet

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Thank you! So what’s the deal with the cables? Do I use the serial cable to program? If not, what is the serial port for?

Yes, a mini-USB cable - any one that gets the mode select screen to come up on the radio when plugged into the lower port.

That (non-standard) upper port on a 436 - it's for GPS data input...
 

ProScan

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Thank you! So what’s the deal with the cables? Do I use the serial cable to program? If not, what is the serial port for?
Since you got the ProScan virtual display showing, the cable is good. Don't change it out now. Use the same cable for programming.
Put the scanner in Mass Storage mode. To do that, power cycle the scanner then hit the "E" key when prompted to enter Serial port or Mass Storage mode.
 

dave3825

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The cable serves 2 functions.
1, mass storage mode which allows the pc access to the micro sd card.
2, serial mode which can be used for the scanner to communicate data to and from programs like Proscan for live display and streaming, with an additional cable going from the headphone jack to line in on your pc.
 
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