> 1. I can't speak to other radios, but on this particular model writing out all 1000 memories is achingly slow in live mode, at least as compared to clone mode. If upload-after-edit is to be the new pattern for this style of driver, you might want to consider flagging individual memories as dirty upon edit and only sync those instead of writing out the entire set.
For a single editing session that would work, yeah.
Have you set the baud rate up? At 57600 (the max my D700 will do) 200 memories come across pretty quick. The D710 can do 115200, so I imagine the D72 can as well, which should be fairly snappy.
Unless I'm missing something, my tests suggest the D72 doesn't support programming at anything other than 9600. The COM Port->Baud rate option (menu 331) only has options for 2400/4800/9600, and setting anything other than 9600 there still results in CHIRP auto-detecting the baud as 9600. The live driver also tends to timeout several times during a read or write cycle, while the clone driver never does. The clone mode driver takes about 15 seconds, while the live variant can take upwards of 3-7 minutes depending on the number of timeouts.
> 2. Continuing to call them "live mode" drivers might be a bit of a misnomer. Perhaps these should be renamed "command mode" or something similar in order to highlight the change in behaviour.
Do any of them say "live" in the name? If so, we'll want to do that yeah.
Yes, it looks like there's a few Kenwood ones named in the UI like that, and a bunch of internal references in the drivers for both Kenwood and Icom radio.
Cheers,
James VE7JWK