Chirp support for Kenwood TK-280 and family.

Kind of...

Tinkering with the Kenwood's Series 60, 60G and the TK-790 to build it's Chirp's drivers I have learn that (at least for this radios) the memory space is the same no matter what firmware version you have (and that has a good logic reason behind)

That tricks has made possible in Chirp to add a "reverse" or "low power" button options to some models that don't have this ones in the OEM software, and this works fine in practice.

Kenwood has a concept in this commercial radios of "channels groups" (aka memory banks in ham speak) and sections/chunks in the memory space reserved for channel groups / channels freq and tone / channels name / etc.

So, once the OEM software reads the section for channel groups it knows at a glance the exact limits of the other chunks it must read (and write up on programming), the OEM software must do a read & interpret on the fly to make this work, and that's not fine in the Chirp's paradigm of operation (read all, then process)

Beside, I have found that in the initial handshake the OEM software get some basic info of radio family, model and options; using a special command and not by reading any memory zone, but that info is in the mem area, and in the normal operation the OEM software doesn't read those zones.

In Chirps paradigm, the radio image must be a complete and accurate image of the memory data as possible, and the zones in the previous paragraph are used to identify the radio type, model & options when you read them from the disk.

That's why we need a user to test the developer driver in http://chirp.danplanet.com/issues/4395#note-7 to get a full Chirp image of one of this radios, to keep the development on going, by now I'm stalled there, as there are just chunks of the memory by now.

This Kenwood's are middle in the "complicated" classification as I see in the Chirp source code, as usual: the newer and more features, more complicated it gets.

73 Pavel CO7WT

 

You obviously haven't tried programming the new NX-5300 series mad by Kenwood. Its a bear. Plus the software has to be
registered with Kenwood along with the computer its being used on then they send you the activation file which will only
work on the registered computer. The older TK Series radio are starting to phased out and not supported except for like
the 8180's/7180's and mobiles and a few others. Also Hand helds like the 3360, 3402/2402 are still being sold. Their
software uses keys like a CD key. Just thought you would like to know.

 

Guess I should have clarified, OLDER Kenwood. Yes, the newer stuff is definitely WAY more advanced to program whether it be Motorola or Kenwood.

Most of the Kenwood commercial stuff I own is older (except for the TK-2170, which uses KPG101d w/serial key). I don't think a CHIRP driver would be too hard to develop for a Kenwood TK-250(g).

BTW, I have found that once I see a few example Kenwood serial keys, it isn't too hard to figure out serial keys on your own. Just saying. That's probably why the NX-5300 series requires a little more secure activation.

 

Well, oops. I completely missed that. So, Yay! Now, I need to see if the cable I bought plays nice in Win10. Thanks!

 

I have a TK-250 that could be loaned to help this project