+------------------------+      +-------------+      +-------+    +-------------+
!   Desktop or           !      ! Radio       !      !       !    ! Dummy load  !
!   Laptop      COM port -------- Interface   -------- Radio -----! (if doing   !
!   Computer             !      ! Box (with   !      !       !    ! transmitter !
!                        !      ! optional    !      !       !    ! alignment)  !
+------------------------+      ! internal 9v !      !       !    !             !
                       !        ! battery)    !      !       !    !             !
                       !        +-------------+      +-------+    +-------------+
                       !               !                 !
                       !               !                 !
                       !        wall transformer   DC power supply
                       !          power supply      (recommended)
                       !          (see text)       or a fully charged 
AC Mains outlet --+    !               !           radio battery if 
                  !    !               !            you feel lucky
+-----------------!-+  !               !                 !
!                   !  !               !                 !
! Uninterruptible   !  !               !                 !
!  Power Supply     ---+               !                 !
!     (UPS)         !                  !                 !
!                   -------------------+                 !
!                   !                                    !
!                   ------------------------------------ +
!                   !
+-------------------+

Part number 68‑80309H26 is the current RIB manual. Until it arrives, click here for the schematic of the real Motorola RIB. On the schematic P2 is a DB25 male and is for the cable that talks to the radio. P4 is a DB15 and is for the RIB-specific cable that goes between the serial port on the computer and the RIB and is wired as follows:

RIB to DB25 Computer cable Moto part number 30-80369B71 RIB end DB15F pin Computer end DB25F pin 11 2 10 3 13 20 9 7 14 5 and 22

RIB to DB9 Computer cable Moto part number 30-80369B72 RIB end DB915F pin Computer end DB9F pin 11 3 10 2 13 4 9 5 14 8 and 9

Some notes on building your own RIB:

• My workbench 286 has a DB25 and my 386 laptop has a DB9. When I made my RIB-to-computer cable I made a three-connector cable with both DB25 and DB9 connectors on the computer end. Like this:
  
  

  RIB to Dual Computer cable
  RIB end DB915F pin	Computer end DB25F pin	Computer end DB9F pin
  11	2	3
  10	3	2
  13	20	4
  9	7	5
  14	5 and 22	8 and 9

  
  
• Never use a flaky or questionable computer-to-RIB or RIB-to-radio cable - The RSS and the firmware in the radios are NOT tolerant of flaky, intermittent or broken connections.   A break in the upload of a codeplug can brick a radio.   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 DB25 there as it will take the most wear... and use a socket saver on it. It's essentially a male connector mated to a female connector, and designed to be screwed into the connector and left there. And after you wear out the socket saver's connector you just unscrew it and toss it in the trash and screw another one into the RIB. The connector on the RIB gets cycled once as the one on the socket saver gets worn out by a few thousand insertion / removal cycles.
• If you use a female DB25 as P4 on the RIB housing and rearrange the pins you will be able to use a regular serial modem cable between the computer and the RIB. However that's not ideal as two DB25s of opposite sex on the same black box can be confusing. An alternative is to use a female DB9 as P4 and use a common DB9 extension cord to your computers DB9 serial port.
• If I were building a RIB strictly for bench work (i.e. 120vAC powered) I'd add busy LEDs on TD, RD, CTS and DTR plus use a green power LED. I'd also use one of the surplus multi-voltage wall-transformer (AKA "wall wart") or desktop-brick style supplies that outputs all three DC voltages (+12v, +5v and -5v), and skip both the 78L05 (the +5v source) and the ICL7660 (the -5v source). Check out the power supply pages at All Electronics, Alltronics, Mendelson's Electronics Co., Inc., Marlin P. Jones and Associates, or Surplus Sales of Nebraska.

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 become 9.1K
• R3, 6, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16, changed to 10K
• R11 to 1K
• R14 to 1.5K
• R17 to 20K
• R5 to 39K

Not only do the above resistor changes more closely match the RS232 standard, but they also slightly reduce the current drain of the RIB making the little 9 volt battery last a bit longer.

From another email:

I was recently trying to program a Spectra Desktrac tabletop base station at our broadcast site and was getting RF interference into the RIB. I ended up having to uncable and remove the Desktrac and drive down the road and program it there. My permanent fix was to add some RF bypassing inside the RIB. I added one 220pf cap (that value only becuase I had a bunch in the truck parts drawer) from each of the following pins of the 15-pin connector (the computer connector) to ground (pin 9): 10, 11, 13, and 14 (i.e. all the active signals). As long as I was inside the RIB, I added the same to the DB25 connector (the radio connector) pins: 4, 6, 11/13, 12 and 15/24. Since I've made this mod I've not seen any more RF problems ‑ I've sucessfully reprogrammed the Desktrac on site, and tested my mod further by reprogramming a Maxtrac at much worse (RF-wise) sites. Another value other than 220pf 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 to open the RIB twice.

The RIB internal circuitry does the following functions:

• Converts the RS232 to TTL levels in both directions: the computer's serial port has separate transmit and receive data lines (think "outbound" and "inbound") that swing from a positive voltage (+6 to +9vDC) through zero and down to a negative voltage (-6 to -9vDC) as it transitions from a binary one to a binary zero. The voltage conversion process converts those +/- swings to TTL levels (+5vDC and ground).
  
  
• The RIB has four "busy" signals - one that goes from the radio to the RIB, a second that goes from the RIB to the radio, a third that goes from the RIB to the computer and a fourth that goes from the computer to the RIB. Different radios use different combinations of the signals. Some radios, for example the Maxtrac, the GM300, and the GTX, don't use the busy signals on the radio to RIB connection.
  
  
• Combines the data into a single lead: The RIB and radio cables make use of two data lines for programming: BUS+ and BUS-. Radios like the Spectra use both BUS+ and BUS- signals at the radio, so they don't need a jumper at the DB25 end. 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 for MaxTracs, Radiuses, GM300s, GTXs, MSFs, and a bunch more only use one programming wire (BUS+) between the DB25 (RIB end) and the RJ45 (radio end), plus (of course) ground to complete the circuit; therefore they use two physical wires. It also needs a bias jumper on the DB25 from pin 4 to pin 11 to deal with the BUS- signal. When people make their own RIB-to-radio cables, they must pay particular attention to ALL the connections at the DB25 end.
  
  The RIB-to-radio cable mainly carries the two data lines, the two busy signals, and ground. The RIB connector has an input for DC power (from the radios that source it), and a ground (labeled "MIC HI") that some radios use to detect that the RIB is attached.
  
  
• The RIB has three sources of DC power, "ORed" internally.
  • There is a 9v battery for occasional mobile use
  • There is the 9vDC wall transformer for bench use
  • Some radio-specific programmming cables (like the Spectra, the Maratrac, and the Syntor X9000) have an extra conductor in the cable that carries switched +12vDC from the radio programming connector back to the RIB (the switched 12v from the radio was intended for accessories, but works just fine for the RIB). There is circuitry inside the RIB to regulate the +12vDC down to the +9v that the RIB signal buffers require.
  
  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. 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. Save the questionable batteries for your kid's MP3 player or the TV remote control ‑ if it dies there it's not going to leave an ambulance out of service.

  If you are building your own RIB, make sure it has an outboard power connector and an internal battery complete with a voltage test indicator ‑ all it takes is a pushbutton, a resistor, a zener diode and a LED.   In a homebrew RIB you could also use a larger housing and replace the 9vDC battery with a 12v ni-mh handheld battery insert, some of which are as large as 1.8ah.

If you are going to be storing the RIB in the bottom of a rarely used toolbox remove the battery. You don't need it leaking all over the RIB PC board... (this is the voice of experience speaking...)

If you want to build your own RIB clone, look at Sandy Ganz's RIB page for a very nice kit (no surface mount parts), and if you want it already built and tested there is a link on the bottom of that page to get one (from eBay seller "RadioStew"). It has the above mentioned RJ45 adapter already built in, complete with a slide switch that switches in the bias voltage and selects which jack is active: the DB25F or the RJ45F.

As shown above my own workbench programming setup has a surplus uninterruptible power supply (UPS) that I resurrected with new batteries. It powers:

• The 286 desktop and the monitor
• A 386 laptop powered by the factory AC supply (the internal battery is now pure unobtanium).
• A 0-to-15vDC 2 amp Harrison Labs (which later became HPs power supply division) supply which is used on most radios for programming (even a 100w trunk mount Syntor doesn't draw 2a while programming). The same supply is useful for bench repair work of handhelds, some of which are 7vDC, some are 9vDC, some are 12vDC.
• The RIB is also plugged in just because I had a spare outlet. The 9v battery inside it functions as its own un-interruptible power source.

Motorola now sells a new version of the RIB called a SmartRIB, SRIB or S-RIB. The SmartRIB, the RLN1015, is backwards compatible with all the functions of the RIB. It does however contain the circuitry necessary to upload flash memory images to the newer radios (when used with the correct software). 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. However the old RIB can be used to program every function of the latest radios except installing a flash firmware upgrade.

A WARNING ON THE SMARTRIB: the center pin of the SmartRIB power plug is NEGATIVE, the exact opposite of the RLN4008 series older RIBs. DO NOT exchange the wall warts between the SmartRIB and a standard RIB by accident. How a screwup like that got past Motos design review process is beyond me. 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 and put a piece of the thick clear shipping tape over the label.

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. These expensive cables are capable of programming a limited number of radios: model numbers include the GP300, GM300, GP350, MaxTrac, Radius Mobile, etc. and several others. They are attractive to those folks that have a fleet of all or mostly one kind of radio.

There are some "RIBless" cables that have a USB connector on the end instead of a DB9 for the serial port. They essentially have BOTH a USB to serial adapter AND the RIBless circuitry in the connector shells. These are designed for CPS that runs under Win2k or XP and are totally USELESS on DOS-based RSS as DOS has no concept of USB, so if you get one you are limiting yourself to only those radios that have Win2K or XP software (i.e. CPS). Windows 95, 98 and ME had some USB support but it was inconsistent.

Personally, I'd build (or buy) a real RIB and a dumb cable because if you have problems with a RIBless cable you will never know if it is the USB to serial converter, the quirky RIB circuit or the radio or.... ????   Every friend of mine that has bought a RIBless cable has sooner or later ended up getting a real RIB ‑ for one of two reasons: either he gets a better radio, for example graduating from a GM300 or MaxTrac (that can use a RIBless cable) to a Spectra (that can't), or he's damaged the expensive RIBless cable (try and get a schematic of it to do any troubleshooting, and some are nonrepairable because they are molded rubber or potted). 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.

Note that there are a number of radios that do not use a RIB... instead the RSS talks through the PC serial port directly to the radio (just mentally picture the RIB being built into the radio). The Nucleus, Quantar and Quantro are in this family.

Many Moto handheld radios program through the accessory connector. In most cases a replacement speaker-microphone cable can be adapted to function as a programming cable. For example on the HT600/MT1000 series you simply move three wires and replace the speaker-mic with a DB25F connector. Details are on the "Genesis Series" page at this web site. The same trick holds true on the MT2000 (part of the Jedi series).

Almost all the mobile radios that use an RJ45 microphone connector are programmed through the front panel mic jack, and they all use the same two pins for programming (one for bidirectional data and the other for ground). The easy way to program that class of radio is to build a DB-25F to RJ45F adapter that will plug onto the radio connector of the RIB, and wire that adapter to allow using a regular ethernet jumper cable between the radios microphone jack and the adapter. And since the Maratrac has switched +12 on pin 1 of the programming cable you can have a third active wire in the cable connected to pin 12 of the RIB. An extra toggle switch in series with pin 1 of the radio and pin 12 of the RIB allows the Maratrac to power the RIB, or to isolate any added circuitry that connect to pin 1 in a MaxTrac, Radius or GM300 (see the "Repeater Controller Interfacing" articles on the MaxTrac page).

Note also that the RJ45 pin orientation for MaxTracs is different than for most other RJ45 uses. And the Desktrac product numbers the pins backwards from the Maxtrac. Most other wiring diagrams (i.e. network cables) disagree with the Maxtrac diagrams. That's why the Maxtrac page at this web site has photos.

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This web page first posted 16-Mar-2004

Motorola® is a registered trademark of Motorola Inc.   CPS, HT600, Micor, Mostar, MT1000, R100, Radio Service Software, RSS, Radio Interface box, RIB, Saber, SmartRIB, Spectra, STX, Syntor, Syntor X, Syntor X9000, Systems Saber and other terms used in this article are trademarks, service marks or copyrighted by Motorola Inc. and are used in this writeup and on this web site in a descriptive or educational use only, and no misuse or infringement is intended.

This article is an original work that was written by a Repeater-Builder staff member at the request of another Repeater-Builder staff member, and is © Copyright March 2004 and date of last update by Repeater-Builder.

This web page, this web site, the information presented in and on it's pages and in these modifications and conversions is © Copyrighted 1995 and (date of last update) by Kevin Custer W3KKC and multiple originating authors.   All Rights Reserved, including that of paper and web publication elsewhere.