Batboard

Hi Folks,

I'm considering acquiring a MCS2000 radio and programming it. Has anyone completed this successfully?

I plan to use a Mac running Windows XP under VirtualBox with a ribless USB dongle from eBay. I can access this model's CPS R02.03, R02.02, R02.00, R01.10.

Has anyone had success with a similar setup? Does the software require any special modification for ham band use? I recall reading somewhere that modification of the binary with a hex editor may be required to allow the ham frequencies.

Thanks again for your help,
KB1GZN

If you want to program 440 ham freq's in a 450-512 radio, yes you will need to hex edit the CPS. But 440 freq's in a 403-470 radio, no problem. I only ever used a XP laptop with a real serial port. Anything else is a flip of the coin. However, while I was able to program my front mount radios through the mike jack, that would not work with my trunk mount radio. I had to build a cable to program through the acc jack. Don't know why. GARY.

I program an MCS2000 no problem via a Windows 7 32-bit box in VMWare. Virtualbox never worked for me for serial ports but VMWare worked perfectly the first time. I use a RIB and proper cabling, and I'm not sure if the ribless cables work for the MCS2000. To be safe I'd get a cheap Kawa RIB and cable combo, or build your own cable using the pinouts on the site here.

Non-OEM RIBs are problematic with MCS2000 radios. I highly recommend hunting down an OEM RLN4008 RIB or one of the Kawa clones built on the same schematic/circuit, and using a Prolific chip-based USB to serial adapter.

I have had success using OEM and non-OEM RIBs with the MCS2000. However even using an OEM RIB have had issues programming certain radios through the control head, so I recommend building a cable that connects directly to the accessory connector on radio.

If you look on Repeater-builder the steps are there on how to hex edit the CPS for ham band use.

I had to program an R split MCS2000 here not too long ago to temporarily act 70cm whilst some radio changes were happening and was able to then and other times successfully program it multiple times using my Windows 10 Pro X64 laptop. An XP Pro VM houses CPS and use an Atten USB to serial converter to go to the RIB. Have had to use the same setup to program other radios as well. That VM is kept in offline mode in both the desktop and laptop and stored officially on our QNAP NAS. So as long as I allow time for the VHD to update then I can follow from one to the next when creating profiles (desktop is handy with 3-4 monitors - 4th works when it wants to).

Next test is dosbox and the USB converter but not got around to that yet.

EDIT: should mention I've got an aftermarket no name RIB off fleabay for my MCS, GM300s etc etc and never had an issue with it either from the DOS Toshiba with dedi onboard serial, XP Toshiba with PCMCIA serial or the Win10 Toshiba with Atten USB converter.