On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 11:31 AM, YT9TP - Pedja yt9tp@uzice.net wrote:
First, I want to emphasize that I know that it is recommended not to copy image saved from one rig to another.
There is just one thing I would like to clarify.
As I understand, Chirp uses clone function of a rig to copy settings from a rig and store them and also restore settings back to that rig.
Clone function is actually meant to be used to directly copy settings from one rig to another using direct cloning cable.
If direct cloning is harmless, why copying image from one rig to another using Chirp is not advisable? Isn't it the same as direct cloning except image is intermediately saved on computer?
YT9TP, Pedja http://www.yt9tp.iz.rs
Cloning means different things for different manufacturers. I'll use the two I am most familiar with as examples:
Yaesu's clone operation does as you suggest: dumps the entire memory and settings to the other radio, including region codes and anything else the radio stores. I believe the firmware is designed to reject the clone if the region code differs. Chirp emulates Yaesu's clone operation, so between like-model Yaesu's, sharing .img files should be fine.
Motorola's clone operation is internally very similar to Chirp's import/export. It takes just the channels and settings of one radio image and sends them to another radio, not touching the rest of the radio's flash. It does it this way because Motorola stores radio-specific data like calibration values and these should not be copied from one radio to another. What they call "cloning" is more complex than simply uploading a .img file.
Due to the nature of Chirp, we don't really know what is contained in the .img file other than channels and settings. All radios in Chirp have been reverse engineered, not written to a manufacturer's specification. Some radios we have nearly the whole memory map decoded, so we are reasonably sure nothing will go wrong when writing an .img from one radio to another. For other radios, all we know is where the channels are stored.
When you export/import or copy/paste from one radio to another, you are copying only channel data. There are no unknowns. We can recommend this with full confidence. Besides, this is the only way to do it from differing model radios.
Tom KD7LXL