Icom IC-M710 Marine radio for HF - software

[blackdove1256]

Thank you.

[StoneCrab]

Originally Posted by wholybee

Stonecrab,
Did you get your communication working? I have had it working on several computers, and might be able to help.

First, you must have the correct cable. The correct cable connects to the 3.5mm jack in the back.

I bought the cable off of ebay from Mark Dunkle. He has been supportive, but the main emphasis has been on the computer age, setup, and software. I tried a large number of computers running all the old software including MS-DOS and never got anything other than clone error. Most of my old computers with a serial port would not boot off of the USB drive.

Last week I contacted Mark and he sent me a replacement cable which I believe he tested before shipping.

I have not had time to test the new cable. If you have a computer that will boot off of a USB drive and has a serial port, Mark's thumbdrive that he sends with the cable will boot the computer into FreeDOS and the Icom software can be run right off the thumbdrive.

My inability to program this radio has to come down to a bad clone cable since I've tried just about every configuration possible. I'll post my success when I get another chance to try.

Mark does encourage the use of Panasonic Toughbooks with the serial ports. He says that they almost always work.

[wholybee]

Can you create a floppy disk to boot off of? As you noted, a computer of the appropriate vintage won't boot off the USB disk. Original MS-Dos does not recognize USB ports. I used genuine MS-DOS. I was a computer tech in the mid 90's and still had original Microsoft installation sets, so I built my own boot disk. I am sure Freedos works fine, but I have never used it.

Using DOSBOX, I have successfully used modern Dell and HP laptops, using Windows 7 and 10. The trick there is that the USB to serial adapter needs to use the harder to find FTDI chipset. Prolific drivers will not work. Search "FTDI 232" on cdw.com. I use the Trip Lite brand. If you use dosbox, in the dosbox-0.74.conf.txt file, make sure you have a line like:

serial1=directserial realport:COM4

Changing COM4 to whatever COM port is reported in device manager for the FTDI adapter.

Hopefully you are right and have a bad cable, and with the new cable it will just work.

[wholybee]

Originally Posted by blackdove1256

Yes, the tough book has a native serial port.

I’m putting together a list of steps I think I can use to complete this task. If anyone already has a procedure that has worked, I would appreciate your sharing it with me.

Thanks to all.

Even with a native serial port, this will not work under windows, or in a command prompt. You will need to either boot into dos with a floppy disk (not sure a toughbook can do this) or use DOSBOX.

This has come up enough times both here and on facebook that I think I am going to make some Youtube videos this weekend setting up a new HP Z-book to connect to the radio. It'll be fun, because it really is a new HP laptop, and I have not attempted it yet on this one.

[wholybee]

Here is the video, for anyone interested. It took me less than 15 minutes to get it working on a brand new Dell laptop on Windows 10. Hopefully it helps someone get it going.

https://youtu.be/DnnMaAAqd1k