RPM/ProGrammer 20 is cool. :)

[ElroyJetson]

My shop purchased RPM/ProGrammer 20 fairly recently to support some work we picked up, and of course I was a significant contributing factor in it, as I may not be an expert at EDACS and M/A-Com radios,
but I'm not totally uninformed, either.

I finally got around to upgrading the firmware and DSP in my own "personal" direct FM model 7100IP,
which has every option you'd ever want in it. I'm up to J2R15 radio code and a very nice DSP code
that supports every feature my radio has, so that's good.

What's really cool about the new radio code (J2R13 and above) is that, now, the FCC menu actually
works while monitoring a trunking system, and it's quite useful. It has several pages of data you
can scroll through, which give you the channel number you're currently listening to or talking on,
(logical channel number), the signal strength of it, the frequency variance between your radio's
oscillator and the reference, which is the control channel, and the system usage moment by moment,
expressed as a percentage. 0 percent means the system is idle, of course, and 100 percent is the
point at which users are probably getting busy signals. I have yet to see the system exceed 40
percent, so it seems that the local system has adequate capacity, but weekend night traffic will
be the real test of that.

The only thing I don't really like about RPM is that it can only read and understand a ProGrammer
personality if it reads it from disk. It can't directly handle a ProGrammer personality by reading it
from a radio. The radio has to be upgraded to RPM compatible firmware in order for its personality
to be directly readable.

Oh yeah...I would like to see the full suite of recovery tools added back to the radio maintenance tools,
but an earlier version still works anyway so it's a minor inconvenience. I've considered trying out a
hybrid installation, using the radio maintenance executable from version 18 and installing it in the
programmer/rpm version 20 installation.

Elroy

 

[otter9309]

Have you noticed that your system has been bumped from 64 GID's to 1024, but you still can't scan across systems. I would also like to be able to use all 12 spaces on the display of the handheld. Eight is just BUNK.

 

[ElroyJetson]

64 GIDs? Group IDs? I've always had 256 group IDs as my prior limit, and have never needed that many as of yet.

I'm glad to have 1024 as the new limit, though.

Incidentally, these limits are by unique names. You could go past the limits on groups by reusing the
same names over and over.

And yes, the firmware is capable of addressing all 12 character blocks per line, and it would be very
nice to have the capacity to use them in your personalities.

I'd also like to see the software adjusted so that you can enter longer group or system names for
purposes of identification to the programming technician, and simply truncate the names to the
displayable length. You'd see the full name in ProGrammer/RPM, and the shorter name on the radio's display.


Elroy

 

[otter9309]

What I refering to is under the group sets the max number has increased from 64 to 1024.

 

[ElroyJetson]

I got you now.

That may be important to me at some point, but not right now. If I've got 10 group sets that are of any use to me, I'd be surprised.


Elroy

 

[LS1_TA]

I just upgraded to RPM 3. The new FCC menus are far superior to what was offered in the past.

 

[Cappyton]

What type of info can you get from the FCC menu?
Mine on my MRk and Orion never worked. I have ver R18B02

 

[ElroyJetson]

The FCC menu works in trunked mode if using RPM, and MAYBE ProGrammer 20.

For RPM version 2, you get a screen showing current channel number and signal strength meter in dBM,
a screen showing your radio's frequency relative to the frequency of the control channel transmission,
a scren showing site number and current control channel number, (I think that's what it is) and a system
utilization monitor which shows how busy the system is, expressed as a percentage. 50 percent would
mean that half the available channels are currently busy.

I don't know what RPM 3 adds to the FCC menus.


Elroy

 

[MR-EDACS]

The FCC Menu has been around for a while Firmware versions j2r09 to j2r13 required you have the FCC.SC4 file installed in programmer in order to use that feature in Edacs mode. The FCC menu feature always worked in the Conv mode since day one when the Jaguar and P7100 first came out. I have been using the FCC menu in Edacs mode for several years now and it has been a very useful tool in trouble shooting problems with a system such as a week channel or a channel that had an audio problem. It is to be used as a tool to give you some kind of idea on what is going on with the system. But it should not be used in system alignments. Some people were using it as a alignment tool and having some serious problems with their systems, That is why the feature was not avalible in versions 9 to 13.