[chirp_users] cloning cable wiring diagram

[Tom Morris]

Danger Will Robinson!!! Do not do this on Baofeng radios! Other brands
should be okay--- read on for the reason and get ready to laugh.

A tech at a large 2 way radio shop in NorCal told me what happens when you
cable clone Baofeng radios.

So, on a Motorola, Icom, Kenwood, etc, there are soft pot values for things
like frequency compensation, audio levels, etc. These are stored in
separate memory areas from the "codeplug" / "personality" data and are only
normally accessed by a special menu in the programming software.

When you use the cable cloning, certain values get copied and clobber those
on the target radio. What's worse, sometimes they get corrupted in the
process.

They had a correctional institution come to them for help after they'd
bought dozens of these things and run them through the megabit Mixmaster.
The end result.... Deviation either nonexistent on transmit or slammed 50+
kilocycles wide.... Radios up to 200k off frequency... The customer
complaint was that their repeater wasn't hearing the radios though there
were a few pairs of radios that would still talk simplex to each other.

They to e-waste the whole lot as there were no saved files from these
things to recover from.

I couldn't tell you if firmware mismatch was involved but it would not
surprise me at all.


On Sat, Sep 15, 2018, 1:18 PM Peter <ptlambert at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> I recently ordered this TENQ "cloning" cable from Amazon:
>
> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MK02BX2
>
> This cable has Kenwood style connectors (3.5mm TRS & 2.5mm TRS) on each
> end, for radio-to-radio configuration copy between Baofeng, Wouxun, and
> "any two-pin style radio with a Kenwood Baofeng plug".
>
> I wanted to verify the pinout before adding it to my radio bag.   So I
> spent several hours scouring the Internet for a wiring diagram for such a
> cable, but with no success.  Even simple pinout descriptions were somewhat
> vague ("back-to-back", etc.).  So I ultimately buzzed out the cable with a
> DVM, tabulated the results, and mocked up a JPEG diagram based on an image
> that originally came from Miklor.com.  See attached for the finished
> product.  The diagram shows that the cable basically has Data Tx from one
> end connected to Data Rx on the other and vice-versa, with Data Ground
> connected between both ends.
>
> I wanted to submit this to John for possible inclusion on his site, but I
> don't see any contact form there.  I do know that he posts to this list so
> here I am...  John, if you are interested, feel free to re-post wherever
> you'd like, maybe here?
>
> http://www.miklor.com/COM/UV_Technical.php
>
> Cheers!
> (Peter)
>
> P.S. I do understand that this list is for CHIRP issues, hence any cable
> discussion would normally be limited to "programming" cables, e.g. Kenwood
> to USB with a suitable integrated controller chip.  However, I am thinking
> that this info might be useful to some folks here regardless.
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