Many thanks, Jim, for clarifying the fact that the RESET directions in the Baofeng manual are incorrect.  My usual presumption is that the manufacturer knows best, and so I consulted the manual.  But when the procedure did not work with the [FM] button as described in the manual, I had the nagging feeling that I saw some similar directions somewhere involving the [MENU] button.  But I was not sure whether that was in reference to some other piece of equipment or for doing some other type of operation, and I recall having the impression that that was something I should be careful about, and, based on experience, I figured it was a good idea to be cautious and to not go pressing buttons in "button-happy" fashion without more-definite knowledge on the matter.

Anyway, I realized that I had a miklor.com-alleged "no-issues" Windows-XP-specific driver installed on my Dell D800 laptop running Windows XP.  So I tried using CHIRP on the D800 and it seemed to work fine, without any error messages.

So I installed the driver that miklor.com suggested for Win 7 on my Dell XPS.  And then CHIRP worked fine on my Dell XPS (with Win 7) as well.  So the problem is resolved.  Hooray!

But it appears at least few items of info need to be corrected and/or clarified on the miklor.com web site in this connection.

One is that the lack of a yellow triangle with exclamation mark next the device indication in the device manager does not mean that a good cable driver is installed for the device, contrary to a statement in the miklor.com directions.

Another is the strong suggestion that the error message "Radio did not ack programming mode" is likely to be a hardware problem (provided the plug is plugged in to the radio and the radio is turned on).  A natural presumption seemed to be that, due to miklor.com hardware suggestions and due to the erratic/haphazard then finally permanent nature of the problem, the problem was an intermittent hardware problem and not a driver issue.  But it tuns out, surprisingly, especially regarding the intermittency, that that presumption is not a good one.

And a third item in need of correction (or at least clarification) is the (erroneous) suggestion that the SHIFT direction can be modified in channel mode.

I'll plan to contact the miklor.com people about those items.



On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 12:01 PM, Jim Unroe <rock.unroe@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 2:19 PM, Richard Haney <rfhaney@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks, Jim, for the suggestions.

The version of CHIRP I've been using is "chirp-daily-20140601-installer.exe".

This is on a Dell XPS L502X with Windows 7 Home Premium edition (with Service Pack 1), 64-bit.  My USB ports are USB 3.0, but I've never had a problem with their being 3.0 instead of 2.0, except for a puzzling USB 3.0 flash drive I once tried, but as far as I know that problem could have been "anything"; I did not have time then to try to diagnose the problem; so I returned the flash drive back to the store for a refund.

In response to your suggestion, I tried the UV-B5's RESET as described in the manual, namely, turning on the radio while pressing and holding the [FM] button.  But the radio did not seem to do any resetting.  I surmise from the manual that I was supposed to get an option displayed of "VFO" (for frequency reset) and "ALL" (for resetting everything resettable).  But I got nothing like that.  And my channels were all still programmed as I had programmed them.  (But before I did any of this I transferred the channel-programming data back to the UV-B5 from the OEM channel-programming software just to be sure I could do that without any problem.)

But in case there was some sort of subtle reset when I tried the RESET procedure, which conceivably might have resolved the original problem, I afterwards tried reading the UV-B5's channel info via CHIRP.  But I still got the usual error message and no apparent transfer of data.


You've not done a RESET then. The manual's procedure is incorrect. That's why I explained how to do it in my first reply (power-on while pressing the [MENU] button, select ALL with the "arrow" keys, then press [ENTER]).

Jim KC9HI 

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