Just FYI, John is asking about the TYT 7800/7900, not Yaesu. Even though these radios *look* like a direct knock-off of their Yaesu namesakes, they're entirely different radios internally.
I dunno. I talked to the rep from Yaesu who warned me that Chirp could permanently brick my radio. He did not appreciate my feedback that if a user program could permanently disable a device, that struck ME as a pretty clear design flaw. Most devices are designed to protect core OS functions. That remains my opinion, but since I have not heard from any Yaesu users that this actually happened, I am going to use Chirp anyway.
You're exactly right. I've heard this for years from Yaesu (via users). My response is that saying that "software can hurt our hardware via the programming interface" is equivalent to them just admitting that their hardware (and engineering) is terrible.
As the primary developer of a majority of the drivers (including a majority of the Yaesu drivers) I can say that I've never actually permanently harmed a Yaesu, even though what I have to do during reverse engineering is far more dangerous than using the finished product. That said, I can confirm that of all the vendors I've worked on (which is basically all of them) Yaesu is by FAR the most fragile by a long shot. I would say every $20 chinese radio I've ever written a driver for is more robust, which is pretty sad.
If the radio dies, I will just stop using or recommending Yaesu.
I know this is flame-bait, but I already don't recommend them based on what I've learned about their engineering from reverse engineering their radios. I've all but stopped agreeing to work on Yaesu drivers, not because I'm afraid of their fragility, but because they're just such a pain to work on. They're the *only* manufacturer that refuses to let the computer control the radio (i.e. initiate the clone in or out). When you're writing a driver for a radio, you have to do that about a billion times and having to coordinate pushing a button (or sometimes three) on the radio and the computer at the same time is just ridiculous in 2024. Also, every icom I've ever seen uses the *exact* same cloning protocol as all the others. Every Yaesu I've ever seen uses something different, with different quirks and behaviors. It's insanity.
(Please, if you love using Yaesus, that's cool, no need to reply to the list and say so. A lot of people prefer them and that's cool, I'm just commenting about what I've learned by reverse engineering a bunch of them.)
--Dan