![]() ![]() So even if you had a driver that used to work, Windows always searches for the most recent driver, and will find the new Prolific driver. BAOFENG PROGRAMMING CABLE PROBLEMS DRIVERSProlific has recently released new drivers for Win 7, and the new drivers very carefully are incompatible with the fake chips. To quote the site, these are fake chips, not actually made by Prolific. Apparently, and I’m quoting from the website, there’s actually a chip inside the USB plug that emulates the Prolific chip used for COM port communications. The cable itself has a USB connector on one end and a double audio connector on the other that plugs into the radio’s headphone/earphone jacks. Step one: Getting your computer to recognize the programming cable. One has to wonder how different these radios really are. Break down and buy the programming cable!Īnd, as it turns out, if you buy the cable for the Wouxun radio, the cable works just fine with the Baofeng radio. ![]() For example, neither the Wouxun nor the Baofeng automatically understand repeater offsets. It is possible to program most settings using the keypad, but it’s an exercise in enormous frustration, and frankly not worth the effort. Both the Wouxun and the Baofeng are designed to be set up via computer software and the special programming cable. In fact, the Chinese radios, instead of “VFO” and “memory,” have “frequency mode” and “channel mode,” meaning exactly the same thing.īut the similarities disappear there. In what they call “frequency mode,” or what the Japanese would call VFO, you can input frequency directly using the keypad. Both the Wouxun and the more recent entrant, Baofeng, reflect this public-service heritage. So it wasn’t too hard for Chinese makers like Wouxun to add a keypad (almost universally missing on public service radios) and market them to US ham radio operators. Well, these radios cover VHF and UHF frequencies. That may seem odd, but your firefighters and policemen use radios that are set up by specialists. ![]() Actually it’s the same in the United States-only in amateur radio is a radio operator also allowed to be the radio programmer. In this market, the person who has the radio really isn’t allowed to fiddle with it. The Chinese radios are variants of public service radios made for an entirely different market. Their radios are easy to program and easy to use. Over the years, these manufacturers have become highly attuned to the US market. Three popular brands are Yaesu, Kenwood, and ICOM. The Japanese have been in the US ham radio market for decades. The Chinese radios will do everything that the Japanese radios will do, but that doesn’t mean that they’ll do everything the same way. They’ve come up with some very inexpensive handhelds, with prices so low that they’re hard to ignore. Chinese companies have entered the US ham radio market. ![]()
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