On 9/18/2018 5:46 PM, Tom Morris wrote:
They [had] to e-waste the whole lot as there were no saved files from these things to recover from.
Oops!
I couldn't tell you if firmware mismatch was involved but it would not surprise me at all.
Reading through the various commits in the Mercurial repository I see that CHIRP pays special attention to values in firmware that aren't correctly initialized, are found in unexpected memory addresses, etc.
This issue is probably one reason why BaoFeng has basically made it _not_ possible to cable clone with the latest firmware on their newest models -- see Jim's earlier post to this thread.
I did try to use this cable to clone between a couple of UV-82HP units but (as Jim warned) it would not happen with the newer firmware. The master unit would never begin the "COPYING" mode.
I also tried to clone between a couple of BF-888s Plus units (similar to the Retevis RT7). These cost me a whole $13 new per unit, and at that price I could afford to brick both the master and slave in the interests of Science. :^) But these units have no LCD screen and as far as I could tell they never entered into cloning mode either. (Jim also stated that clone copying was limited to models that had an LCD screen.)
I do think these cables could be still useful for setting up two devices in repeater mode. Or just cutting in half to use for other projects as Bill suggested.
John has graciously posted the pinout diagram and Jim's advice to his "Hardware / Technical" page, at the bottom of the "Programming / Cloning Cable" section, here: http://www.miklor.com/COM/UV_Technical.php#progcable