I’ve got a bunch of Motorola P200 handhelds. I am looking for the computer connector (serial, I assume) and the software to reprogram them and such. Anyone able to point me in the right direction?
You’ve come to the right guy! Well, ok, I guess you were addressing many thousands of board members and guests…
Anyway, the number one Motorola radio help site out there is batlabs.com. There’s some model specific info on the main page. The real goods are in the discussion board, though.
There’s a few chapters in the bad-news part of this thread tho:
Here’s the first thing: Motorola is super-duper extra aggressive with software license enforcement. If you go around asking for software in this manner at a radio-specific website or message board, you’ll be flamed, scolded, and then probably banned. They (//\otorola and the sites’ webmasters) just don’t fool around with this stuff. True or not, everyone interpretes “Point me in the right direction” as “give me free, unlicensed software”. Be prepared for extreme stickershock if you want to buy the software from Ma Moto. I doubt it will be less than $200 for a 10+ year old DOS program.
Secondly, though I’m not really familiar with that specific radio (more of a Saber man myself), many of the older models in the Radius line require really slow pre-Pentium computers to run properly. Like 50MHz or less.
Thirdly, the factory cables are really expensive. There’s often aftermarket repros available but sometimes they are of (highly) questionable quality and still run $50+. It’s very possible to corrupt a radio’s codeplug with bad software or cables. Often, these ‘bricked’ radios need to be sent to the factory depot to be resotred…at exceptionally high cost, of course.
Finally, you can’t just use any frequency you think might be available. There’s strict licensing for channels. If the radio is UHF, look into GMRS channels. If VHF, try MURS.
You might find the best option is to visit your local factory authorized dealer for programming.
Ask me more at my username at hotmail. I’m pretty active in the Motorola two-way world, both public safety and amateur radio functions.