Win 97 programming question

[Denton]

I couldn't find a Win 97 or starrsoft software forum so I'm guessing this is the best place to post my question.

I have a Pro-97 and I've heard that you can't program more than 1 trunked frequency/talk group in a bank. Is this true? I would like to program all of the Police divisions in one bank and, if possible, all of the other trunked Motorola frequencies in the same bank as well. I know that some of the other trunked systems have to be programmed a certain way so this can't be done with them, but I don't think the Motorola system has to be programmed in specific channels.

Any info on this would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Colin9690]

You can program as much as 100 frequencies in every bank, and 150 talkgroups in each bank. I hope this clears things up a little.

 

[hiegtx]

I couldn't find a Win 97 or starrsoft software forum so I'm guessing this is the best place to post my question.

I have a Pro-97 and I've heard that you can't program more than 1 trunked frequency/talk group in a bank. Is this true? I would like to program all of the Police divisions in one bank and, if possible, all of the other trunked Motorola frequencies in the same bank as well. I know that some of the other trunked systems have to be programmed a certain way so this can't be done with them, but I don't think the Motorola system has to be programmed in specific channels.

Any info on this would be appreciated. Thanks.

Actually, it sounds like you are confusing talk groups with trunked systems.
You don't program more than one system per bank. But, once you have that system set up, you can set up multiple talkgroups for that specific system.

With EDACS and LTR systems, you have to program the frequencies in specific LCN order, and a specific channel (LCN01 would go in channel 001 for instance). So you cannot double up systems.

Technically, you probably 'could' sneak the control channels for more than one Motorola system into the same bank. But they'd be sharing the same limited number of talkgroup slots. The same talkgroup that was PD dispatch on one system could be the dog catcher on the other. No way to separate the two, and the alpha tags would not be correct half the time.

 

[Denton]

hiegtx, you're right I was confusing talk groups with trunked systems.

You can program as much as 100 frequencies in every bank, and 150 talkgroups in each bank. I hope this clears things up a little.

How can 150 talkgroups be programmed into a bank when a bank only contains 100 channels? Probably a dumb question but I can't understand how this would work.

Also, what's the most efficient way to program a scanner? I'm thinking of putting all the motorola frequencies in bank 0, then place EDACS and LTR in banks 1 & 2 and then the non trunked police/ems/fire in the next few banks. That will leave me with a few banks for anything else I might come across.

 

[KE5BCP]

Please take a look at the wiki before you go any further:
http://www.radioreference.com/wiki/index.php/Trunking_Basics

 

[scnnr]

hiegtx, you're right I was confusing talk groups with trunked systems.



How can 150 talkgroups be programmed into a bank when a bank only contains 100 channels? Probably a dumb question but I can't understand how this would work.

Also, what's the most efficient way to program a scanner? I'm thinking of putting all the motorola frequencies in bank 0, then place EDACS and LTR in banks 1 & 2 and then the non trunked police/ems/fire in the next few banks. That will leave me with a few banks for anything else I might come across.

Ok let me give this a stab at explaining it to you.

100 frequencies is what you can program into the scanner to monitor in each bank. If you wanted to put in 100 of just conventional frequencies in a bank, say bank 1 then scan that bank as strictly conventional all you would be scanning is 100 frequenies in that bank.

You can also program your scanner with a mixed system, say a Motorola Trunked system along with a buch of conventional frequncies. What is meant by Talk Groups is stricty for the trunked system that you program in. A Talk Group is like a single frequency, you can program in 150 TG'S into the system (same bank) as the conventional frequencies.

Below is a snap shot of how my scanner's Bank 5 is programmed with Win 97

On the left is the frequncies programmed in. The first 2 are the control frequencies for the Motorola trunk system. The rest are the Airport conventional frequncies

On the right lower side is the Airports trunked system TG'S each one is the same as a single channel.

Hope I never confused you to much.

EDITED Also you might want to take a look at this quick reference chart to program you Pro 97 by hand.

 

[Al42]

There's a bug (indocumented feature?) in GRE scanners that allows you to program more than 1 Motorola trunked system in a bank, as long as you have at least one active (not locked out) conventional channel programmed between each group of control channels. You still have the same "bank" of talkgroups, though, so if there's an overlap (say the police use talkgroup 16 for traffic and fire uses talkgroup 16 for fireground), you'll have a problem knowing who's talking.

 

[Denton]

I'm still very confused. lol

I'm going to re-read this thread tomorrow when I'm not as tired.

 

[hiegtx]

hiegtx, you're right I was confusing talk groups with trunked systems.

How can 150 talkgroups be programmed into a bank when a bank only contains 100 channels? Probably a dumb question but I can't understand how this would work.

Also, what's the most efficient way to program a scanner? I'm thinking of putting all the motorola frequencies in bank 0, then place EDACS and LTR in banks 1 & 2 and then the non trunked police/ems/fire in the next few banks. That will leave me with a few banks for anything else I might come across.

Denton,
What scnnr is referring to is basically what you can do to maximize efficiency.
Again, don't confuse talkgroups with channels.

Program a trunked system into a bank. If it's Motorola, as I was getting at, and as Al mentioned, you can slip more than one 'system' into that bank. A better use is if you have a Motorola trunked system that uses multiple sites. You can indeed load the various sites into the same bank, as long as you separate the sets of control channels (for each site) with a conventional frequency programed in. See this thread. (It refers to the Pro-96, but the technique and concept is the same.)

Once you have your trunked system programmed, then program the talk groups you want into the bank. You have five talkgroup lists for the bank, each one with 30 slots available (150 total). This is completely separate from channel memory.

Now, for the rest of the bank, that you did not use for trunk system frequencies, you can enter conventional frequencies. Say the trunk system used a total of 10 channel slots for its frequencies. You would still have 90 channels available in that bank you could program with non-trunked frequencies. Could be other frequencies for the same city, county, whatever, might be completely unrelated. Your choice. Use them, or leave them blank. Many cities with trunked systems also have a few non-trunked, conventional frequencies. These could be for regional communications, mutual aid, some use them simplex as firegrounds. Many possibilities here. Just remember that using these conventional frequencies won't affect your use of the separate talkgroup list memory.

For EDACS & LTR systems, each site must be in a separate bank, since the channels have to be programmed in a specific manner, into designated slots. You can't combine systems or sites on these. That trick only works on Motorola trunk systems.

 

[lowboy654]

I couldn't find a Win 97 or starrsoft software forum so I'm guessing this is the best place to post my question.

I have a Pro-97 and I've heard that you can't program more than 1 trunked frequency/talk group in a bank. Is this true? I would like to program all of the Police divisions in one bank and, if possible, all of the other trunked Motorola frequencies in the same bank as well. I know that some of the other trunked systems have to be programmed a certain way so this can't be done with them, but I don't think the Motorola system has to be programmed in specific channels.

Any info on this would be appreciated. Thanks.

OK here is the link to the software forum here you should repost there, as this will most likely be moved there.

http://radioreference.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=89

 

[lowboy654]

Please take a look at the wiki before you go any further:
http://www.radioreference.com/wiki/index.php/Trunking_Basics

Good start but, he needs to be moved to the right forum.

http://radioreference.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=89

 

[loumaag]

Actually this is a better place. The OP doesn't understand Trunking and he doesn't understand his radio. These are not software problems, this is a person problem.

Review the Wiki, read the manual. Understand the terminology. The software does you no good if you don't know what you are looking at.

 

[lowboy654]

Actually this is a better place. The OP doesn't understand Trunking and he doesn't understand his radio. These are not software problems, this is a person problem.

Review the Wiki, read the manual. Understand the terminology. The software does you no good if you don't know what you are looking at.

very true, I guess its like getting a fast car and how do i drive it, start with the manual then see what everyone else can do with it, the 97 is a great scanner i like it more than my 96. I think I will go tomorrow and get a 2055 just to step it a little

 

[loumaag]

... the 97 is a great scanner i like it more than my 96. I think I will go tomorrow and get a 2055 just to step it a little

While I agree that the 97 is a great scanner, it suffers from one insurmountable problem. It cannot be altered for re-banding without a trip to Ft. Worth. As soon as I saw RS' attitude to this issue when the questions started flying I was glad that the last GRE built scanner I bought was the 2096. I am not saying that RS will not step up to the plate when the time comes, but they are far from being in the forefront of customer service right now. I like the ones I own, but will not buy another until they come out with better plan on dealing with the turmoil that re-banding will cause.

 

[scnnr]

While I agree that the 97 is a great scanner, it suffers from one insurmountable problem. It cannot be altered for re-banding without a trip to Ft. Worth. As soon as I saw RS' attitude to this issue when the questions started flying I was glad that the last GRE built scanner I bought was the 2096. I am not saying that RS will not step up to the plate when the time comes, but they are far from being in the forefront of customer service right now. I like the ones I own, but will not buy another until they come out with better plan on dealing with the turmoil that re-banding will cause.

Lou, I agree with your above comment. I have both the 2096 and the Pro 97 myself. With our dollar up around the 89 cent American now I would have loved to upgrade to another GRE if one was out with more features and flash upgradeable for the future rebanding issues if needed here in Canada. Don't know what is up with them at GRE ( Radio Shack ) lately. Been awful quiet on the scanner front there.

 

[Denton]

I appreciate all the helpful info. loumaag, you're right, I don't understand how my scanner works. I've read the manual and I can do the basic stuff, such as scanning a frequency range, using signal stalker, scanning specific banks and fine tuning SQ but to tell you the truth, I found the manual a bit hard to understand.

Maybe the info is there, but I don't think it properly explained how different trunking systems should be programmed into different banks.

lowboy654, I do have specific questions about win97 so I will post those questions in the forum you linked to.

Regarding re-banding, will the Pro-97 become useless when this happens? I just got it this week and would like to get some mileage out of it before it becomes obsolete.

 

[loumaag]

I appreciate all the helpful info. loumaag, you're right, I don't understand how my scanner works. I've read the manual and I can do the basic stuff, such as scanning a frequency range, using signal stalker, scanning specific banks and fine tuning SQ but to tell you the truth, I found the manual a bit hard to understand.

Maybe the info is there, but I don't think it properly explained how different trunking systems should be programmed into different banks.

lowboy654, I do have specific questions about win97 so I will post those questions in the forum you linked to.

Regarding re-banding, will the Pro-97 become useless when this happens? I just got it this week and would like to get some mileage out of it before it becomes obsolete.

Understand, I wasn't picking on you, just pointing out that this indeed was the place for you at the moment. Take a look at the Trunking Basics page on the Wiki. For scanners that have banks, you can't really put more than one trunking system in any of them. Even it they could work mixing types (which they can't) the same problem exists for those of the same type. Say you wanted to put two Motorola systems in one bank. Say they both use TG 144, one system has it assigned to the Sheriff, the other to the Sanitation department. The radio has no idea what TG 144 is being picked up at any time so you get both. The problem is that if they put in the owner manual that you could not put more than one system in a bank (same type) then some smart a** would point out that you can. Of course you won't get the results you want so they hint at it pretty strongly that you should not, whereas we just tell you don't do it. :lol:

 

[Denton]

Understand, I wasn't picking on you, just pointing out that this indeed was the place for you at the moment.

I know. I wasn't being sarcastic, I was agreeing with you. In 5 days, I've learned some of the basics but I'm still clueless when it comes to most things related to scanning.

Take a look at the Trunking Basics page on the Wiki. For scanners that have banks, you can't really put more than one trunking system in any of them. Even it they could work mixing types (which they can't) the same problem exists for those of the same type. Say you wanted to put two Motorola systems in one bank. Say they both use TG 144, one system has it assigned to the Sheriff, the other to the Sanitation department. The radio has no idea what TG 144 is being picked up at any time so you get both. The problem is that if they put in the owner manual that you could not put more than one system in a bank (same type) then some smart a** would point out that you can. Of course you won't get the results you want so they hint at it pretty strongly that you should not, whereas we just tell you don't do it. :lol:

I still find a lot of the terminology confusing. I've read the Wiki and I understand the concepts you have explained but I'm still not clear on how I can tell which "system" a talkgroup is using. I'm going to read through the win97 help file again before posting my questons in the software forum.

 

[lowboy654]

Is the area that you live in listed here on this web site, if so you can do the web import thing with win 97, but first you will have to be a donating member here . i believe that if you use the web import of win 97 i will get you up and running and will help you with the programing of your scanner, there is a bite of a learning curve programing a trunking system, but with win 97 and the import future you will be up and running and it will help you with your understanding of this scanner

 

[brian]

This is off-topic, sorry for that.

Lou, I agree with almost everything you contribute to this board. And I don't disagree that the PRO-97 is vulnerable to rebanding - we don't even have an assurance that an upgrade will be available at all for the PRO-97. I had the same considerations with contemplating my PRO-97 purchase.

But I convinced myself that rebanding was far enough away (I'm in Wave 4 I think, SouthEast US) that the PRO-97 at its recent sale price of $149 was still a good investment. It's a feature-packed conventional scanner, with a sensitive receiver, high channel count, tones, 16-char alpha tags, signal stalker, LTR, computer-programmable, etc. Even when/if it looses its Motorola 800MHz trunk-tracking ability, I think I will have gotten my money's worth out of it, and I'll probably keep it around as a conventional scanner and maybe add a discriminator tap to it.

For the beginner, it's an excellent low-cost investment to see if you like the hobby. If so, you can upgrade to a better radio before rebanding affects you (or possibly invest a little more cash on the update), and if not you're not out a lot.

For the scanning veteran, it's a nice addition to my compliment of radios. In my case, the PRO-97 is a replacement of my PRO-92B, and I'm quite happy with it thus far.

For the record, I did shy away from also purchasing the PRO-2055, for now at least.

Brian