TK-890 won't do anything

[LakeMan2]

Just got a TK-890H. Single remote basic head, single band. Plugged in the remote cable, the power cable and the programing cable and turned it on. Only thing on the screen was a P1 in the upper left (Priority 1) and a 1 in the middle of the channel line. I can't get it to do anything else. It will not recognize the programing cable. I am not too surprised there. I have the KPG-43, but I don't know if my 25pin to 9pin cable is good. I need to try some other cables I have at a different site.

What did surprise me is that I can't enter any modes. Cant get into test mode (PF1+power on). Can't check firmware (PF2+power on) etc. I can't get the radio to display anything else other than P1 and what I assume is the channel name 1. When I hit the mon button, the monitor icon does display. That is the only difference hitting any keys have (that and the dim)

I have searched and could not find any posts with a similar problem. So my question is: I assume the radio is just blank/wiped, but would that prevent going into test mode for example?

Thanks

 

[LakeMan2]

Ignore my initial post. I was, by shear luck, able to get my programing cables to work. I was able to read the radio and sure enough, it simply only had one channel programed. Also I saw in the FPU , apparently, you have to program/enable the various modes (test, firmware, clone) before you can power on into them (and they were not checked). So that explains why I could not get into them. Bottom line is that everything looks good now.

For anyone else that may have programming issues in the future I will explain how I got my KPG-43 25 pin cable to work. This is one of those cases that justify keeping old parts "just in case" you need them 20 years later (in spite of what your wife says). I bought a 25 pin to 9 pin "null modem cable" to connect to the KPG-43 (other posts mentioned that this worked). From there you can either plug it into a regular serial port or use a usb to serial adapter. Regardless, I could not get either to work. The radio would not recognize the connection at all. I suspected that the 25 pin to 9 pin cable simply was not wired correctly for the KPG-43, but no easy way to prove that.

I started looking through my boxes of old computer parts to see if I could find another 25pin to 9pin cable. I did not find one, but what I did find was a probably 20-25 year old Radio Shack Null Modem Adapter (male DB25 to Female DB25). It swaps some pins, so I figured I would try it in case it swapped back what I suspected was the issue with my cable. So it obviously went between the KPG-43 DB25 and the DB25 end of the 25pin to 9pin cable. Sure enough that did it, The radio would now read and write.

For what it is worth the adapter pin connections looked like this:

Male DB25 Female DB25
1 --------------> 1
2 -------------> 3
3 -------------> 2
4 -------------> 5
5 -------------> 4
6&8 ----------> 20
20 ------------> 6&8
7 -------------> 7