I create communications protocols for embedded devices as a regular part of my job. (I have also been an actual rocket scientist.) The following are my somewhat-informed prejudices...

Designing an external programming interface that is 1) close to bulletproof, so a user CANNOT damage the device, and 2) nearly universal, so that common operations as programming a memory channel are the same across revisions of the device, or across similar devices, is NOT rocket science, and there is no good reason a radio manufacturer cannot do that. In fact, it would almost certainly be cheaper and easier in the long run for them to do so. If you know the internal format of your device configuration memory, and what the limits for each setting are (and you MUST know these things in order to write your radio firmware), then a well-organized firmware design can definitely accommodate a mostly-generic programming protocol. Program memory is cheap and plentiful now, even for very low-cost devices, and generic interface code can easily be written to be reusable in your NEXT product.

The next step, of course, is documenting and releasing your protocol, whereupon you can then make it a standard, and most everyone can use it. Interoperability benefits everyone, and there's a competitive advantage to using a standard where one exists. The practice of just bit-banging a binary memory image into the radio is, IMO, lazy and short-sighted. Or maybe they just don't have good programmers writing their radio firmware, or good managers setting sensible priorities for the development projects...

</rant>

Regards, Steve

On Sun, May 25, 2025 at 6:49 PM Stiv Ostenberg via Users < users@lists.chirpmyradio.com> wrote:

Agreed. I am not happy with Yaesu for that reason. To be honest, as I pointed out to a testy Yaesu rep, if their radio is so badly designed that a user level program can brick the radio, then their radio is garbage. Seriously, coming from an IT and Computer background, if your product is so fragile, nobody should trust it. Needless to say they continue to insist their radio is solid, but can be destroyed by software.

I still own Yaesu radios, and I will buy them if they suit me, just ignore their marketing claims, they are not trustworthy.

-----Original Message----- From: John K via Users users@lists.chirpmyradio.com Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2025 6:09 PM To: CHIRP users list users@lists.chirpmyradio.com Cc: John K kemkerj3@gmail.com Subject: [users] Re: Chirp with Yaesu radios

Yaesu engages in FUD: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, marketing. It's because they've entered into a marketing agreement with a for-profit company to produce software for modifying their radios. Therefore, a group of amateurs who have written open-source software that Yaesu can't make money off of, they'll make all sorts of claims about it "bricking" Yaesu radios. I've yet to meet a single person who has experienced it first-hand. Only people who know others who have supposedly had their radios bricked with Chirp.

I wouldn't worry about it at all.

Of course, I no longer buy Yaesu for that, and other reasons.

On Tue, May 13, 2025 at 9:04 PM howard--- via Users < users@lists.chirpmyradio.com> wrote:

...

I have an FT817ND and an FTM7250DR, both of which are listed as supported radios. However, I have seen a number of posts on the internet from Yaesu stating that using Chirp with Yaesu radios may

damage them.

...

On the 7250, Chirp uses the clone mode of the radio which, to my mind, is a very safe way to go. I am not sure how it works with the 817. I would like to use Chirp with both but I am, of course, worried by the Yaesu statements. Are these statements still valid? Or have they been invalidated by progress within Chirp? Or were they not valid in the first instance but a reflection of some other issue? Thanks for any information on this. Howard, VK4BS _______________________________________________ Users mailing list users@lists.chirpmyradio.com https://lists.chirpmyradio.com/postorius/lists/users.lists.chirpmyradi o.com To unsubscribe, send an email to users-leave@lists.chirpmyradio.com To report this email as off-topic, please email users-owner@lists.chirpmyradio.com List archives: https://lists.chirpmyradio.com/hyperkitty/list/users@lists.chirpmyradi o.com/

-- --John E Kemker III _______________________________________________ Users mailing list users@lists.chirpmyradio.com https://lists.chirpmyradio.com/postorius/lists/users.lists.chirpmyradio.com To unsubscribe, send an email to users-leave@lists.chirpmyradio.com To report this email as off-topic, please email users-owner@lists.chirpmyradio.com List archives: https://lists.chirpmyradio.com/hyperkitty/list/users@lists.chirpmyradio.com/ _______________________________________________ Users mailing list users@lists.chirpmyradio.com https://lists.chirpmyradio.com/postorius/lists/users.lists.chirpmyradio.com To unsubscribe, send an email to users-leave@lists.chirpmyradio.com To report this email as off-topic, please email users-owner@lists.chirpmyradio.com List archives: https://lists.chirpmyradio.com/hyperkitty/list/users@lists.chirpmyradio.com/

The Yaesu affiliate that sells cables n software is an issue here in Australia, (If it don't work) i.e.:

1. brought a USB29C and disk to update FT90R : Zip, Nada, Zilch

2. brought a USB29F and diskto update FT1500 & 1802 : completed after a few headaches.

Chirp WX did not pick up the FT90R, Even though it listed. Lesson learned

My point is... contacted the Company in the US and they *_DO NOT Help_* overseas "faults" etc, with their products.

Outcome: Binned the FT90R and sold the other 2 for pennies. Problems solved.

Bought a Baofeng and 2 Quanshengs (all 3, less that a quarter of the cost of the 3 Yaesu's combined) fm the proceeds of the 1500+1802

Rgrds n 73 Chad VK4CMR

On 14/5/25 11:09, John K via Users wrote:

Yaesu engages in FUD: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, marketing. It's because they've entered into a marketing agreement with a for-profit company to produce software for modifying their radios. Therefore, a group of amateurs who have written open-source software that Yaesu can't make money off of, they'll make all sorts of claims about it "bricking" Yaesu radios. I've yet to meet a single person who has experienced it first-hand. Only people who know others who have supposedly had their radios bricked with Chirp.

I wouldn't worry about it at all.

Of course, I no longer buy Yaesu for that, and other reasons.

On Tue, May 13, 2025 at 9:04 PM howard--- via Users < users@lists.chirpmyradio.com> wrote:

...

I have an FT817ND and an FTM7250DR, both of which are listed as supported radios. However, I have seen a number of posts on the internet from Yaesu stating that using Chirp with Yaesu radios may damage them. On the 7250, Chirp uses the clone mode of the radio which, to my mind, is a very safe way to go. I am not sure how it works with the 817. I would like to use Chirp with both but I am, of course, worried by the Yaesu statements. Are these statements still valid? Or have they been invalidated by progress within Chirp? Or were they not valid in the first instance but a reflection of some other issue? Thanks for any information on this. Howard, VK4BS _______________________________________________ Users mailing list users@lists.chirpmyradio.com https://lists.chirpmyradio.com/postorius/lists/users.lists.chirpmyradio.com To unsubscribe, send an email tousers-leave@lists.chirpmyradio.com To report this email as off-topic, please email users-owner@lists.chirpmyradio.com List archives: https://lists.chirpmyradio.com/hyperkitty/list/users@lists.chirpmyradio.com/

I 100% defer to Dan, what I described is the story I had heard, nothing more.

That said, I own (and like) my FT-7250, but I programmed it long ago with RT-Systems software, I never tried CHIRP. I think if it as the mobile version of the FT-70DR HT, but it does have a reputation of being a problem/odd-ball radio according to its owners.

I've owned FT-817/818 radios, but never programmed them with CHIRP.

Hope this helps,

Ken, N2VIP

On May 13, 2025, at 21:21, Dan Smith via Users users@lists.chirpmyradio.com wrote:



...

I have an FT817ND and an FTM7250DR, both of which are listed as supported radios. However, I have seen a number of posts on the internet from Yaesu stating that using Chirp with Yaesu radios may damage them. On the 7250, Chirp uses the clone mode of the radio which, to my mind, is a very safe way to go. I am not sure how it works with the 817. I would like to use Chirp with both but I am, of course, worried by the Yaesu statements. Are these statements still valid? Or have they been invalidated by progress within Chirp? Or were they not valid in the first instance but a reflection of some other issue?

Of your options, I'd say "not valid in the first place". Yaesu has never reached out to the project to complain (or help), but I've heard the same rumors of passive-aggressive bashing. The 817 has been in use by tons of CHIRP enthusiasts for a very long time, and even provided the first (only?) solution to fix their 60m channel memories when the details needed changing.

That said, I will say that Yaesu radios are the least-robust of really any radio I've ever worked on. Their programming protocols and memory formats are more fragile than $25 chinese handhelds, with no good excuse for why. They're the only radios that (still) require a silly dance of coordinated button-pushes and software clicks, they don't actually reset their memories when you ask them to (they just mark all the channels as deleted), and they don't do much checking of the content you send them over the wire. It's totally inexcusable for an expensive computer-programmable device in 2025 to claim that sending something bad over the wire could cause it physical harm, but that's the implication of their claims.

I feel like you're probably in good company with other 817 users. The 7250 was a hot mess that is now discontinued, IIRC. There were apparently some silently-incompatible firmware version discrepancies floating out there, so your mileage with CHIRP may vary. I can definitely say you'd be better off replacing your Yaesu radios with something better and then you don't have to worry about it :)

--Dan _______________________________________________ Users mailing list users@lists.chirpmyradio.com https://lists.chirpmyradio.com/postorius/lists/users.lists.chirpmyradio.com To unsubscribe, send an email to users-leave@lists.chirpmyradio.com To report this email as off-topic, please email users-owner@lists.chirpmyradio.com List archives: https://lists.chirpmyradio.com/hyperkitty/list/users@lists.chirpmyradio.com/

The very brief version of the story goes something like this:

Early versions of chirp did something that according to Yaesu wasn't needed, and did it very frequently. This action 'wore out' or 'used up' a certain component, forcing the owner to return the radio to Yaesu for repair. According to legend, the replacement part became either hard to get or too expensive (or both?), and Yaesu determined the unusual repairs were due to chirp. Yaesu advised chirp (I assume), and chirp changed its software. Ever since then, Yaesu has advised against using chirp to program Yaesu radios, and even said that if Yaesu determined radio was damaged by chirp they would not repair it.

The Yaesu position remains unchanged.

The chirp software has changed.

I've heard this story too, but I can tell you it's not true.

Yaesu has never reached out, and CHIRP has not changed to address this. Not only does it not make sense in general (every click of the VFO knob writes to the same location in EEPROM) it also doesn't make sense specifically. Unlike most other manufacturers, almost every Yaesu radio uses a different clone protocol and thus a different set of code in CHIRP, so one change wouldn't affect but maybe a few models. It also doesn't make sense because Yaesu radios don't actually implement a programming protocol, they only support radio-to-radio cloning. It's a one-way super dumb data flow that literally can't be done any other way or it wouldn't work at all. The radio thinks it's getting a clone from another radio when CHIRP is writing to it. Unlike most other manufacturers that let the PC communicate back and forth with the radio, Yaesu radios are just all-or-nothing brain dumps.

I'm sure I've reverse engineered the clone protocols of more Yaesu (and Icom and Kenwood) radios than any other single person on the planet over the last 15 years. You learn a lot about the engineering culture at these companies when you do that :)

There have not been any reports (that I am aware of) about Chirp damaging any Yaesu radios.

This part is true :)

That is my understanding, it is up to you to determine the level of risk this represents to you and your radio.

This part is also true :)

--Dan