Back to Home   Some Thoughts on Radio Programming Computers and Laptops
Compiled, HTML'd and Maintained by Mike Morris WA6ILQ. 		  Print this Page

This is a work in progress and an opinion piece… What works for me may or may not work for you. The content below is derived from my experiences.
I'd appreciate emails with your comments, corrections, critiques, suggestions, ideas and updates for this page (or any page).

Background:
I have known the owner of a local two-way shop for over 45 years. I'm in my 70s, semi-retired, and have been helping out at his shop a couple of days a week for over a decade. The rear bench at the shop still has two old desktop computers that are dedicated to radio programming... one is MS‑DOS and Windows 98SE and the other computer is XP. Yes, they are still in use for various older Motorola, Icom, Kenwood radios and a few other things (like the shop phone system).
The other workbenches at the shop have recent Windows 7 or 10 computers for everyday radio programming.

His shop takes care of around 45 channels of commercial analog trunking, plus a similar number of channels of digital trunking (Icom IDAS MultiTrunk) and several conventional analog repeaters plus a privately owned trunked P25 system with 5 sites and 4 channels per site. These are all spread across a large number of mountaintop sites around southern California. All but two of the sites are 4x4 access only, and you have to let the forest service fire roads dry out for 4 to 5 days after any measurable rain. He also takes care of a number of customer base stations, mobile radios and handhelds.

The repeaters range from dual Maxtracs, dual GM300s, low and high power R1225s, MTR2000s, dual TK-8180s, TKR-850s, NXR-810s, and a few more. Most of the systems were originally built by other shops and he inherited the maintanance. Most of the in-house designed repeaters are configured with the transmitter dialed down to 5 to 10 watts followed by a Henry Electronics 100 watt amplifier. The exciters run forever at the low power level and the amplifiers just plain work and are repairable.

The customer radios include Icom 6061Ds, Kenwood TK-8160s, TK-8360s, TK-7180 / 8180s, TK-840s, TK-880s, several models of Motorola APX (mobile and handheld), XTL (mobiles) and XTS (handhelds), XPRs, and more.

In conclusion, the programming environment that the shop has to support ranges from MS‑DOS, 16‑bit Windows 98SE, Windows XP, 32‑bit Windows 7 and both 32‑bit and 64 bit Winows 10.

I also help maintain a number of ham radio and GMRS repeaters.

COM ports / Serial ports / Serial adapters:
Radio programming has been done with a serial cable since serial ports became common on desktop computers. Unfortunately with the popularity of USB the real hardware serial ports ("COM ports") on factory desktop and laptop PC's are becoming more and more rare. Desktops are a little easier, you can still purchase a single or dual port serial card and install it into any slot in a desktop PC, and at least one major manufacturer still offers one or two real 9-pin COM ports from the factory (the Dell Optiplex XE series).

Some laptops have slots on the side for PCMCIA / PC Card and ExpressCard expansion cards... several manufacturers made/make serial port cards, one is here  (off-site pointer, opens in a new browser tab), another is https://www.startech.com/en-us/cards-adapters/ec1s952  (off-site pointer, opens in a new browser tab).

USB to serial adapters and USB programming cables are becoming more and more the go-to solution for radio, PBX and other device programming. FTDI-based USB adapters and cables work with the stock Windows drivers, Prolific adapters are not as successful. Some Prolific adapters only work with an old driver. Some proprietary cables (some older Icom cables come to mind) require proprietary drivers.

Eventually you may find yourself in a situation where a USB to serial adapters just doesn't work with some target devices… One possible reason that nobody thinks of might be that the USB connector provides +5 volts and some of the USB to serial adapter manufacturers cheat and use ±5 volts as the source voltage of the I/O pin driver circuits. The RS232 specification calls for voltage swings of up to ±15 volts as the signal switches from zero to one and you will find ±8 to ±12 in common use. To accomplish that ± swing requires a source of both positive and nevative voltage to feed the pin drivers. Making -5 volts from +5 volts inside the USB to serial adapter is not difficult but any more voltage requires a voltage booster circuit and some manufacturers just don't bother… and most of the time they get away with it.
So if you have a problem, you might check to see what your target device needs. If it works with some computers and not with others don't assume its the computer or the software, it may be the USB to serial adapter hardware that is at fault.
I've verified that my desktop computer (a Dell with a factory rear panel COM port) and the ones at the shop (several manufacturers with factory or plug-in-card based COM ports) and the CF‑27, ‑28, ‑29, ‑30 and ‑31 laptops that I've used have proper RS-232 voltages on the COM port connector.

One common problem with the USB cables (and USB-to-9-pin adapters) is identifying COM port numbers as you plug in the cables without having to open Device Manager via the Control Panel and then Administrative Tools and then Computer Management.
There used to be a Device Manager icon on my desktop until I found an easier way…

That easier way is the Serial Port Monitor program by Helm Software (off-site pointer, opens in a new browser tab). I have been using it since late 2022 on both Windows 7-32 and Windows 10-64 computers with zero problems.
It is a FREE(!) program and can be downloaded here https://sourceforge.net/projects/serial-port-monitor.     Local copy: serial-port-notifier-v1.2.2.exe
The name was changed from "monitor" to "notifier" as it is not a true serial port traffic monitor, it just announces the COM ports as they are plugged in to the computer or unplugged… a small dialog pops up down in the lower right corner… Example: "New Serial Ports: COM19", or "Serial Ports Removed: COM4".

Field Programming Computers:

Personally, I use Panasonic CF‑series of Toughbook laptops as my radio programming computers simply because they are very rugged, totally portable, available, inexpensive, pretty indestructible, repairable, and (most importantly) have a real 9‑pin hardware COM 1 port on the back. And new batteries are available for the CF-28, CF-29 and CF-30 models because they all use the same battery as the current CF-31 model (current as of the time of this writing).

I started out with a CF-28, moved up to a CF-29, however these days my everyday programming laptop is a CF-30 running 32‑bit Windows 7 sp1.

Why a CF-30?   Two reasons:

Why 32 bits?

DOSbox-X is on-the-fly configurable... I can tell it to pretend that it's anything from an original IBM PC (4.77 MHz 8088) to an 866 MHz Pentium III. DOSbox-X just plain works (and it's free). And you can map any external COM number to appear to the MS‑DOS program as any other COM number. This feature is extremely useful as the original PC only had COM1 and COM2... you can tell the MS-DOS program to use COM2 and the programming cable might be COM15.
Note: There is "DOSbox" and thre is "DOSbox-X", two separate programs, two different support teams. A colleague suggested that I use DOSbox-X with the comment that DOSbox seems to be more of a gamers virtual machine where DOSbox-X seems to be more of a technical / industrial solution.

If the particular old radio is being recalcitrant I can break out the CF‑27 that runs MS‑DOS 6.22 or Windows 98SE directly. But I've been lucky, I've not needed to use it in over three years.

I have a Dell laptop running 64‑bit Win10 for the newest APX, Turbo, Kenwoods, Icoms and other newer radios. Note that Chirp now requires 64-bit Windows.
When the Dell dies I'll probably be looking for a Toughbook CF‑31.

Panasonic Toughbooks:
The CF‑ series Toughbooks are interesting laptops. Supposedly the initial model (released in 1994 as the CF‑41) was designed in response to a set of feature requests from the Japanese military... including that they be rugged enough to be driven over by a tank!! No, I'm not kidding. The second model was the CF-25 and was marketed as "fully rugged". Fully rugged models have been in production since. The product line has fully-rugged, semi-rugged and tablet models. They have liquid-crystal displays designed specifically for visibility during daylight use. They also have protective hinged metal side panels, a shock-mounted hard drive, a connector for a desktop or mobile docking station, thermal design so they work from 15°F (-9.5 C) to 130°F (54.4 C) and a moisture and dust-resistant keyboard and touchpad.

Toughbook hardware designs are updated during production and the various improvements within a model are referred to as "Marks"... a Mark 1 is the original hardware version, a Mark 2 is the first hardware change, a Mark 3 is the second hardware change, and so on. The Mark number is encoded as a range in the first letter of the model number - for example a CF‑30A through CF‑30E is a "Mark 1". A CF‑30F through J is a "Mark 2". A CF‑30K or later is a "Mark 3". One model, the CF‑19, has had 8 Marks!
The Mark number is important on some models, for example the CF‑29 Mark 5 (the last one, first letter N or later) could boot off of USB, none of the prior models or Marks could.

Radio Programming Computer Tips:

The relevance of these tips is dependent on your situation - what radios / devices you will be supporting. Several of the shops customers are tow truck operators and have older mobile radios in service. Several of the repeaters that the shop maintains are based on dual GM300s (old!), other repeaters are current production. If, on the other hand, if the devices that you have to access or maintain are a few remotely located Scom, RLC, CAT, Arcom or similar repeater controllers then your laptop situation will be very different.

  1. On an old but new-to-you laptop (any manufacturer) you should change the internal CMOS memory backup coin cell on your schedule before you are forced to on it's schedule. This is the voice of experience.
    As an example, replacing the coin cell in the CF‑27 requires you to do a 90% disassembly as it is on the back side of the motherboard... you will want to add a CR2032 coin cell socket on a long pigtail and glue down the new socket in a more accessible location for the next time.
    The CF-30 is not much different - there is a YouTube video on how to repalce the CF-30 coin cell here   (off-site pointer, opens in a new browser tab). Again, the cure is to add a socket on an adequate length pigtail and glue the socket down where it is accessible / convenient.

  2. A significant amount of the older and common radio programming software from Motorola, Kenwood, Icom, and others just will NOT run on 64‑bit Windows. So you install Win7SP1‑32 or Win10‑32 on your radio programming computer. And since 32‑bit Windows can only access 4 GB of RAM there is no point in adding any more RAM... it will never be used.

  3. WiFi is / was an option on a large number of the CF‑series Toughbooks and most other laptops of the era. I've run into several CF-29s and CF-30s that were manufactured without it. I find it useful as locally most of the local hilltop radio sites have building-owner-provided WiFi for cellphone calls and field tech laptops. The quickest way to tell if any individual Toughbook has WiFi is to go poking around the BIOS screens.
    While it can be added using factory parts (and I've done it to two CF‑30 Mark 2s and several Mark 3s) it's a pain... finding the WiFi module and snapping it into the socket is no problem, the problem is finding the two diversity antenna and coax cable assemblies that are built into the laptop lid (and the left side one and the right side one have different length coax cables!). If you think you are going to ever need WiFi while using your field radio programming laptop then it's better to find one that already has WiFi built in. Yes, there are USB‑based WiFi add-ons but that ties up a USB port and it's one more thing floating around in the laptop bag. And some laptops only have two USB ports (some have only one!).

  4. You do NOT want a laptop with memory chips that are soldered onto the motherboard. If the motherboard RAM on any laptop develops a problem then you are screwed... The chips are essentially not available and hence not replaceable. It's time to find a replacement motherboard (or a replacement laptop). This is the voice of experience on a CF‑28 and on a CF‑29.
    The CF‑29 had either 256 K or 512 K of motherboard RAM (depending on the Mark) plus one memory socket for additional RAM. The maximum RAM for any CF‑29 is 1.5 Gigs made up of 512 K on the motherboard (and that was rare!) and a 1 gig module in the socket. Yes, I tried several different 2-gig modules in the socket. Nothing worked. Personally, I try to stay away from any laptop with motherboard RAM. Used CF‑30s are commmon, and can have up to 4 gigs of RAM with minimal expense.
    The CF‑30 was the first Toughbook that did not have any RAM soldered to the motherboard - all of it is in two sockets.
    Trivia: the RAM modules that are installed in a CF‑30 must be identical (the same size and speed) and a pair of cheap 2 gig modules maxes it out for a 32 bit OS.

  5. Like I said above, the CF‑29 and all the prior models use IDE / ATA drives. The larger sizes are almost impossible to find new and therefore are expensive when found (and I don't trust any "refurbished" IDE / ATA hard drive from any vendor). Years ago you could find an IDE SSD, and later on you could find an IDE converter that would work with a SATA SSD, but no more. The CF‑30 was the first fully rugged Toughbok to use SATA. And you can buy a factory new 1 TB SATA hard drive from several vendors for about US$50‑$75 (early 2023 prices). Or an SSD if you want...
    Couple the difficulty in finding a new hard drive with the limited memory of a CF‑28 or CF‑29 and you see why the CF of choice for an inexpensive field programming laptop is a CF‑30.

  6. If you will ever need to run MS‑DOS, Windows 95 or Windows 98 based RSS then look for a laptop that can boot off of a thumb drive. As I said above, the CF‑29 Mark 5 (first letter N or later) was the first Toughbook that could boot off of USB. A friend has a CF‑29 Mark 1 and boots MS‑DOS off of a CD. All of the CF‑30s and later can boot off of USB and that makes booting into MS‑DOS (or Linux) easy.

  7. The CF‑29s and CF‑30s can run 32‑bit Windows 7sp1... but the CF‑29 is much happier with XP as it needs much less RAM than Win 7. The CF‑30s can run 32‑bit Windows 10 but my experience is that it is visibly slower than Win 7. In my opinion the CF‑31 is the first Toughbook that is really comfortable running Windows 10.

  8. The Toughbooks have their hard drive mounted in a field-swappable shock-mount called a "caddy". Many resellers sell the Toughbooks less the caddy. Some models (like the CF‑30 and ‑31) share a common caddy design, some models have a model-specific caddy. When you go looking for a Toughbook you need to make sure that it comes with the correct caddy or that you can get one! And make sure it comes with a full set of screws! (see the next item).

  9. The caddy has to be disassembled to remove / install the hard drive. The screws that secure the top cover of the caddy to the bottom half are very tiny and have a very uncommon thread. Don't drop one, they bounce and you'll never find it! (This is the voice of experience)

  10. The optical drive in a CF‑30 is in a field swappable slot and you can have a CD, CD‑RW, DVD, DVD±RW (model CF-VDM302U) or a floppy drive in the slot. There is a "Secondary Battery" option (model CF-VZSU1430) for that slot that extends main battery life and enables you to hot-swap your primary battery and prevent a reboot.

  11. The CF‑28, 29, 30, 31 and 53 all use the same battery (a CF-VZSU46AS) and battery charger (CF-AA5713A) , and both them and the cigarette‑lighter mobile charger are still available from various vendors. At the time of this writing the CF-31 is still in production and because of that new batteries are available and the batteries are easily swapped in the field if you can't find an AC outlet.

  12. The CF‑30 Mark 1 (first letter A through E) used a 32 bit processor. The CF‑30 Mark 2 (first letter F through J) used a 64 bit processor. The CF‑30 Mark 3 (first letter K or higher) was the last of the CF-30s and used a later 64 bit processor that was less power-hungry and was much nicer on the battery.
    The Mark 1 and 2 were shipped with Vista, the Mark 3 could be shipped with either Vista (common) or Win 7 (not as common).

All of the above reasons are why my target was a CF‑30 Mark 3 when I went looking for a field-rugged laptop that I could dedicate to field radio programming. I also wanted Win 7-32 already installed (I didn't want to have to do a search for drivers). I also wanted factory Wifi however that wasn't a deal-breaker as I knew it could be field-installed. It took about 5 months but I found a CF‑30K in almost new condition on eBay with a working factory copy of 32-bit Windows 7. The fact that it booted Win 7 meant that it came with a caddy and a hard drive of at least 80 gigs (that was the smallest factory supplied drive when the CF-30 was still being made). I then bought a new 1 TB drive (another $50) and after the CF-30 arrived I imaged the hard drive that came with it (only 2.9 gigs were in use) onto the new drive. During the imaging process I created a 5 gig MS‑DOS partition (drive D:) to hold the MS‑DOS based RSS for when I booted it with the MS‑DOS thumb drive. Or for when I run DOSbox-X. A few months later I expanded the RAM from the 1 gig it came with (a pair of 512 modules) to a full 4 gigs (two 2 gig modules, under $50).

After the boss saw my CF‑30 he had me build three for the shop.

Shortcomings:

The only shortcoming that I have found with the CF‑series Toughbooks is the 1024x768 XGA display. My regular laptop has a 1920x1080 display and the CF‑30 feels cramped.   But I'm not using the CF‑30 as a word processor / email / web surfing computer!   It's a field radio programming computer that can take a fall from 6 feet and shrug it off... (am I dating myself to say it could take a licking and keep on ticking?) The physical ruggedness, the hardware COM 1 port (that always works) and other characteristics are worth it.
Trivia: There are CF‑ series models with built-in GPS - it appears as COM 2. A friend's CF‑30 came with it.

Other rugged laptops:

There aren't many - and those that are available are generally expensive and have replacement parts issues. A friend who works at a local hospital reports that the contractor who maintains their emergency electrical power generators uses a company-issued Getac (off-site pointer, opens in a new browser tab) brand laptop and loves it... but there aren't many out there and parts (like a replacement keyboard or battery) have to be ordered from the company in Irvine, California.
Dell has "Rugged" and a "Rugged Extreme" product lines... models include the Latitude 5430 Rugged Laptop and Latitude 7330 Rugged Extreme Laptop. They show up on eBay occasionally.
I have no experience with the Getac or the Dell Rugged units.

Contact Information:

The author, Mike Morris WA6ILQ, can be contacted here.

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This page originally posted on 10-Dec-2023

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