If you want to build your own level converters for going between RS-232 +/- voltage levels and TTL or LVTTL, the max232 chip family is often used. Here it is for $2 in quantity one.

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/316

On 11/3/2011 7:08 PM, Dan Smith wrote:

...

The Wouxun KG-UV1,2,3D, use the same cable as the Kenwood TH-F6a, it's the combo of a 3.5mm (1/8") and 2.5mm (3/32") plug.

Okay, I added that. I thought all the Wouxuns came with a programming cable, but maybe not.

Some dealers include the cable (and charge more). Others don't.

FWIW, I think I've seen references that the Puxing and some of the other Chinese radios may also follow this "kenwood" style.

Does their driver CD come with drivers for OS X? Just wondering as I use a mac and this looks like a great setup with cables!

Craig

On Nov 3, 2011, at 12:52 PM, Aubrey Turner wrote:

I have some info on 3rd party cables if you are interested.

I am using a 2-in-1 cable from 409Shop.com to program a number of Yaesu radios.

Here's the product:

• http://www.409shop.com/409shop_product.php?id=103790

It works with my VX-7R, FT-60R, and FT-7800R. It should also work with my FT-8800R, but I haven't tried it (programmed what few memories I needed manually on that rig).

There are two things to know:

• You will need the Prolific drivers from the 409Shop website for it to

work on Windows (getting the 'latest and greatest' from Prolific will cause it to fail).

• The 3.5mm adapter has the threading for the VX-7R. It *will* work

with the non-threaded Yaesu units (FT-60R, VX-3, etc), as the rest of the plug is physically and electrically identical. It just sticks out a bit on the FT-60R.

As for being reputable I've never had an issue with 409Shop. You just have to remember that they're in Hong Kong and it may take a while for the shipment to get to you. I have also used a USB cable from them to program a Wouxun KG-UVD1P (although I must note that this was not with CHIRP, as I sold that unit before I learned about CHIRP) and I used another of their cables for the Baofeng UV-3R. Pretty much all of their cables (and the ones on eBay) use the Prolific PL2032 chipset, so I have a laptop set up with those drivers and use it for all my radio programming (once the driver is installed, it works for all of the 409Shop cables).

If you want a U.S. vendor, I've also had luck purchasing cables from Valley Enterprises. Here are their Yaesu cable selections:

• http://www.valley-ent.com/catalog/yaesuvertex-c-25_45_49.html

They carry a line of cables using FTDI USB-serial chipsets, which gets around a lot of the software hassles Windows users have had with the Prolific-based ones. I have one of their cables for my Yaesu FTM-350AR.

On 11/03/2011 02:29 PM, Dan Smith wrote:

...

Hi all,

I often get private questions about which cable to use for programming particular radios (especially the Icom 92AD). The CHIRP site has a little bit of information about this, but I think we can do better. I just created a "Programming Cable Guide" page here:

http://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/wiki/CableGuide

This is just a brain dump from memory on various radios and cables. I would much appreciate:

1. Corrections, comments, and additions
2. Links to pages describing how to build cables
3. Links to reputable vendors of 3rd party cables

If anyone is interested in helping edit this page directly, let me know and I'll get you set up with edit access.

Thanks!

---

chirp_users mailing list chirp_users@intrepid.danplanet.com http://intrepid.danplanet.com/mailman/listinfo/chirp_users

RT Systems are using the FTDI chip but have assigned a custom USB Vendor ID and Product ID to it. Under Linux you can use this cable (and I do use it with Chirp) by telling the ftdi_sio driver the additional VID/PID to look for. I have a UDEV rule that I believe handles this.

Is this a "version 4" cable? Someone came to me a few months ago with one that didn't even show up as a COM port on Windows when properly configured. It seemed like maybe it was being used in native USB mode to send/receive data to the radio and did not contain a typical serial port emulation device. This would make it harder for others to use the cable, of course, and would make it easier to lock the software to their hardware. Given that all their current stuff makes a big deal about only working with their cable, this seemed to fit.

I've never laid hands on one of these cables, so if I'm wrong, please correct me :)

Yes, the FTDI chips can be used with either a Virtual Com Port (VCP) driver which provides a COMn interface under windows and then you have to figure out what com port to open or it can be used with a direct driver (D2XX) where the USB bus is searched for a matching Vendor and Product ID (VID/PID).

Right, okay. I guess I didn't realize it was a typical FTDI chip, but again I've never had my hands on one.

Yes, it would be difficult for CHIRP or other cross platform software to work with the FTDI direct interface because of the binary issues.

There are libraries (libftdi) that can be used. I've seen stuff use it though some of the stuff that uses it is for bit banging and other cases where more direct control is needed.

As I mentioned there are two types of work around:

1.) Change the VID/PID<-> driver associations so you get the virtual comm port style driver (or the linux ftdi_sio driver to load, like in your icomsio.sh script)

or

2.) Change the VID/PID on the FTDI chip to the standard VID/PID for FTDI serial adapters. (which I think is in eeprom but never tried it)

Yep, these are good to know, and worth documenting for sure. However, for most "normal folk" this means it won't work with CHIRP or other programming software. So, maybe not malicious on their part, but I'd still steer people away from their cables if they're hoping to do anything else with them.

If you want to document the windows or linux procedures for above on the wiki, that'd be awesome.