Motorola rib software free

If you build your own cables please make it a point to use top quality raw materials - cable, connectors, shells for the connectors, strain relief tie-wraps inside the shells, etc. Note that the connector on the RIB P2 that the radio programming cable plugs into is a male! So use a top-quality male DB there as it will take the most wear It's essentially a male connector mated to a female connector, and designed to be screwed into the primary connector and left there.

And after you wear out the connector on the socket saver you just unscrew it and toss it in the trash and screw another socket saver into the RIB. However that's not ideal as two DBs of opposite sex on the same black box can be confusing. If I were building a RIB strictly for bench work i. Jones and Associates , or Surplus Sales of Nebraska.

Always read a radio before you program it. There's something wrong! The only exception is when a radio is passworded, and you are going to overwrite the passworded codeplug - but make sure you have a clean read first. From an email received by repeater-builder The two-way community around here is a close-knit group and a bunch of us get together ever other month for lunch and to trade war stories. Some of us have had problems using the stock Moto RIB on different computers, usually laptops.

It boiled down to be a lack of negative voltage swing on the Busy out and RX data out lines back to the computer. These changes fixed it: R1 and R4 change to 9. I ended up having to uncable and remove the DeskTrac and drive down the road and program it there. I added one pf cap that value only becuase I had a bunch in the truck parts drawer from each of the following pins of the pin connector the computer connector to ground pin 9 : 10, 11, 13, and 14 i.

Another value other than pf may work better but these were in vehicle stock and worked. Doing both connectors may have been overkill, but I had the extra capacitors and didn't have the time or the inclination to open the RIB twice.

Different radios use different combinations of the signals. Only those radios that use just one wire for programming need to have the BUS- line routed somewhere, and the jumper from pin 4 to pin 11 connects BUS- to an internal BIAS voltage so the one programming wire will be properly dealt with. The RIB-to-radio cable mainly carries the two data lines, the two busy signals, and ground. Do not let the 9v battery in the RIB get old enough to sag in voltage while programming.

The battery option was intended strictly for field work, for example using a laptop to update an already-installed mobile radio, like a front mount radio in a fire truck or ambulance. If the battery voltage sags mid-upload you can easily brick a radio, so always keep a fresh battery on hand and swap it out if you have any concerns. Better yet, make up a cable that plugs into the cigarette lighter connector and powers the RIB.

If you are going to be storing the RIB in the bottom of a rarely used toolbox remove the battery. There used to be a very nice aftermarket RIB made by a gentleman named Sandy Ganz, but he evaporated some time in the time frame. A slide switch selected either the RJ or the DB for all other radios. The first page is the schematic, the second page is a circuit board layout, the last page is a handwritten parts list with Mouser part numbers.

A photo of his board, partially assembled, is here it's the only photo I have. As shown above my own workbench programming setup has a surplus uninterruptible power supply UPS that I resurrected with new gell-cell batteries. It powers: The desktop computer and the monitor The radio programming laptop.

A 0-tovDC 2 amp Harrison Labs which later became HPs power supply division supply which is used on most radios for programming even a w trunk mount Syntor doesn't draw 2a while programming. The wall power pack for the RIB is also plugged in just because I had a spare outlet. The 9v battery inside the RIB functions as its own un-interruptible power source. It does however contains it's own microprocessor and a buffer memory for flashing the ASTRO and later series of radios. Supposedly it is not possible to build a Smart RIB from scratch as it uses custom application specific IC's that are made by Moto Semi for internal use by Moto Comm and are totally unavailable to the public.

The old RIB can be used to program every function of the latest radios except installing a flash firmware upgrade.

How a totally avoidable screwup like that got past Motos design review process is beyond me. This negative-tip situation is opposite from almost every other wall wart used in Moto's products. Why couldn't they use correct plarity? Or a different plug? This was totally stupid as you can kill a serviceable SRIB if you use the wrong wall wart. The negative voltage wall wart that came with my SRIB is now painted with a neon green paint stripe - I store it and the SRIB also marked with a neon green paint stripe in the same cardboard box also marked with a neon green paint stripe.

As of this writing SRIBs are very hard to come by, and they are outrageously expensive when they do come up. Save your SRIB! A good policy on ANY wall wart power pack is to label each one and its associated equipment as they come into your shop with a peel-and-stick label Brother P-Touch or similar and put a piece of the thick clear shipping tape over the identifying label. This version identifies the amount of internal flash in the SRIB, and D is needed for flashing the 1 megabyte radios.

There are manufacturers that build so-called "RIBless" cables. They aren't really RIBless as these cables take advantage of a design quirk in the serial port sometimes called the data port built into some radios which allows the use of a very simple RIB circuit that will fit into the cable connector shell. They are attractive to those folks that have a fleet of all or mostly one kind of radio.

Yes, Windows 95, 98 and ME had some USB support but it was very inconsistent - it would work with some programs and not others, and on some motherboards, and on some serial adapters, but not every program, adapter, or motherboard.

And there are "real" and "clone" USB-to-serial chipsets, with the driver hassles that go along with them. Either way he's decided that a RIB and a repairable or duplicate-able home-made dumb cable is a more cost-effective arrangement in the long term.

Also some of the clone RIBs have difficulty in knowing when to send and when to listen. The real Motorola RIB has additional circuitry that takes care of this task, along with circuits that handle interfaces with the more complex radios, such as Syntor, Astro, Spectra and MTS series. Another reason to avoid the RIBless cables is the outright cost. These programs insert delay routines on a user selectable basis in order to try and fool the software into thinking it is running on a slower machine.

So, we recommend against using these utilities, you'll just end up frustrated. Just use a slower computer to begin with. Use this for troubleshooting. If the Com Test passes, then you know that the computer should be the correct speed, the RIB works, and your cable connections are probably ok. As far as operating systems go, you want to use just plain old DOS. Because Windows 95 is a multitasking environment, and the RSS is looking for exclusive control of the serial port resources, the two will fight and you end up with a dead radio.

Some RSS is very picky about having enough conventional memory available to run, if you get an "Out of Environment Memory" error, or something similar, this is most likely the problem. The solution is to use a plain boot floppy that does not load any drivers or utilities.

Sometimes, though, due to WinXX registry settings, this doesn't always happen properly. In essence, you could have a computer that relies upon the software to map a port, and that may not work too well. As far as the cables from the computer to the RIB go, they are pretty straight forward and are easily fabricated. In general, Motorola does not sell the pieces of side connector required to build your own cable for obvious reasons. You may find that extra holes may need to be drilled and pins moved around to get them in the correct places, but it is possible.

Again, you have a number of options available to you: Buy the original from Motorola, just call Buy an aftermarket RIB from some of the 2-way dealers on the internet Buy and aftermarket or original used off of an auction site Ebay Build yourself one from the diagram provided The schematic we have on our site is of the official RLN RIB. Be warned that there are a number of aftermarket variations available.

Some will not program all radios, because they don't have the full, compatible, circuit in them. However, this may be what you want, and you are by all means entitled to your own position.

But, if it doesn't work, do you have a schematic to troubleshoot it from? It does however provide the circuitry necessary to Flash Upgrade some of the newer radios with the correct software. It is also not possible to build a Smart RIB, it uses application specific IC's and surface mount devices which cannot be ordered from Motorola. OK, here's the deal on RSS. The only legal way to posess RSS is to sign the required license agreement and purchase it directly from Motorola.

Many people believe that Motorola will not sell it.