From: "Ralf Reiterer" <ralfreit@...>
You pretty much have to play around to document it.
I know. I also have done that for other radios. The easy solution for
that boring part would be that Icom document the memory layout for every
radio supporting the 1A 00 command as they did for IC-R8500 and IC-R75.
That would save a lot of time and also prevent any damage of the radio
should corrupted data be written via that command (and the firmware
didn't failed to recoginze the data as being corrupted - the IC-PCR1000
is such a candidate).
This is what I
get for the 00 command:
That pretty much looks like the layout of the PRO version. So seems that
the storing capabilities have not changed between PRO and PROII.
Wondering about how the situation is for the PROIII...
BYTE unk1;
BYTE txtone[ 2 ]; // ? Really three bytes with unk1
Just a hit: I assume that unk1 really belongs to txtone (BYTE
txtone[3];) as that is the case for other radios too. However I have no
idea why Icom needs 3 bytes for a CTCSS tone when 2 suffice. ;-)
And this is what I get for the three P registers, the 1a 01 contents.
Alas, there is no command to transfer the Px registers to the
VFO. (Ah, if you do know one I overlooked please pass it along.)
Unfortunately not. I too do not see great utility in that registers.
...I change bands and the like. It also allows me to play with data
mode
filter selections and bandwidths.
For switching into data mode, you might consider using command 1A 06.
That's the way I used to do it. The switch into data mode is easy. Now
select a filter in data mode? That's the tough part. <sigh> That is
what I worked around using the memory load trick. I found it has some
utility if I do that. It's not huge. But it does work. And I get to
jam set several parameters which slightly reduces the time overhead
required to get the radio parameters fully changed. I implement 100
memories, the cannonical set of bands with WWV and 60 meters, and
3 vfos per hand. That combined with the push buttons I have anove
ny tuning rate slider makes a rather easy to use implementation. The
slider works logarithmicly. The further off center you go the faster
it tunes. And I set the rate tickmarks with buttons so I can quickly
move frequency in decade steps from 1Hz to 10MHz. I also added some
handy buttons for 3kHz steps and 5kHz steps. The 1, 3, and 5 kHz steps
make for nice manually controlled band scanning.
I've been building the thing for myself, mostly. So it works the way
I work rather than making any attempt to create an analog for any form
of receiver dial.
If they do it I do have experience with the "safe way" that we used
in the Motorola Inmarsat terminals. ...
That indeed is a very good strategy. It would be interesting if Icom has
chosen a (similar) safe way for updating the firmware in the IC-7800. If
not that radio would indeed turn into a very expensive brick. ;-)
Just for curiosity: what kind of software do you develop for the
IC-756PROII?
A remote control. If you want to see it I can send it to you. It has
one glaring problem that I need to tweak and repair and some lack of
controllability at the moment - TX tone and filter controls and the
like. Stuff I set and forget for the most part. The problem is making
changes too fast gets it confused. I have gone to considerable effort
to make the remote control safe when you make manual control changes.
That comes back and bites me a little. {^_-} I have in mind two strategies
for fixing the problem. But I'm being lazy at the moment.
If you play with C++ I can even let you have the source under GPL.
Maybe we should move the communication off list. Otherwise people might
beat us for being off topic.
<grin> At least it's more or less on topic. It is about the Pro's.
Send me email if you're interested. (And if I don't answer within about a
day send it to the list. It's rare but sometimes my VERY aggressive spam
filter misfires, particularly if the mail is not plain text or is full of
three letter combinations and odd punctuation marks. (Both are really
good spam indicators, by the way.)
{^_-} W6MKU, Joanne, (The broadcast video software I do is NOT GPL by
ANY stretch of the imagination. This remote control is recreation.)
