RIBless cable for EDACS 500M?

[azraphale]

Anyone have a schematic cor a RIBless 500M cable, or have an old one lying around they'd like to either rent or part with? I have 13 of these beasts to program but not a lot of spare capital to work with, so finding and buying a TQ-3370 is beyond my budget -- and besides, I doubt most of the circuitry inside except the VRs and MAX232C are necessary for a dedicated cable for a single model of radio. I'm just not sure what to eliminate and what to hard-wire off of the TQ-3370 schematic to build my own RIBless cable (which should only cost me something like $20 in parts at worst). Price Industries went out of business, so I can't get a cable from them even if I wanted to spend the money.

Ideas? Thoughts? Spare cables?

 

[Radioman96p71]

I've made my own cable using some spare parts, actually i just used some 22awg wires pushed into the mic connector holes and alligator clipped them to my breadboard.

If you are sitting with the radio facing you, the mic connector is Pin 1 on the right, 9 on the left.
1 - TX data from a TTL source to the radio
3 - RX data to a TTL converter from the radio
2,5,7 - short all three together and to ground
tie pins 6 and 9 together.

In that configuration, the radio will boot up in PROG mode. I've found that the 3 grounded pins aren't really necessary, but the OEM cable had them that way so I figure there was some purpose.

As far as the TTL converter, im sure a MAX232C would work just fine. I cheated and just tied the wires from pins 1 and 3 to the proper pins on my P7100 ribless cable, and it worked just peachy. I've done 3 500M's this way and no issues.

Hope that helps!

 

[greenthumb]

What pins on the P7100 cable did you use, by chance? I can't seem to find my pinout diagram with the functions of each pin at the moment...

 

[Radioman96p71]

If you check out this image:
http://www.hallelectronics.com/getech/tq-lpe.gif

I used Pin 1 and Pin 11, 1 being on the bottom, 11 being the upper right nearest the alignment peg.

It's too early in the morning to remember which went where lol I will try to find my notes and tell you which one for sure later. Tho I found it by trial and error, it didn't work one way so i flipped them and it went just fine. Keep in mind you will have to use a ribless cable and it has to be self-powered (usb) in order to power the level converter inside it. If you cross ref the schematic for a MRK cable (same thing) you can find the pin that gets A+ from the radio and then tap that from Pin 6/9 on the 500M to power it.

My cable was a Price ribless. Hope that helps!

 

[greenthumb]

Thanks! I have an OEM TQ-less serial cable, so i'll give it a shot and see if it works.

 

[azraphale]

I cannot get this to work with R18 software. Tying 6 and 9 together or pressing SCAN, + and - together at power-up give me every character and bar on the display lit up. Any button press gives me the text "PASS". But no setting of baud rate or any other settings I can mess with on the ports will allow programming, and nothing gives me a "PROG" message on the display.

Does my radio have firmware in it that is not compatible with R18, maybe? I am at a loss here.

 

[azraphale]

I cannot get this to work with R18 software. Tying 6 and 9 together or pressing SCAN, + and - together at power-up give me every character and bar on the display lit up. Any button press gives me the text "PASS". But no setting of baud rate or any other settings I can mess with on the ports will allow programming, and nothing gives me a "PROG" message on the display.

Does my radio have firmware in it that is not compatible with R18, maybe? I am at a loss here.

 

[azraphale]

Anyone?

 

[EnidPuceflange]

Entering program mode doesn't require any particular version of ProGrammer - just the cable and 2,5,7 shorted to ground.

 

[azraphale]

Okay, I have tried two different brands of RIBless cable and it appears that these radios have later flashcode (firmware) judging by the two versions of the Tyco M/A-COM manual I found. So I need earlier firmware, it appears, to run a recovery on these radios with Radio Maintenance R18 (or a real programming box and lead, perhaps, or a newer version of ProGrammer, I'm not sure which.

Anyone have flashcode for a 500M? I think if I can force in older flashcode, I'll be all right.