Older Motorola radio programming on modern PCs

Please use caution following these instructions, I don't take any responsibility for radios that are bricked because you have followed them, so far both my GM350s and my GP340Ex have programmed fine using this method but that doesn't mean all radios will be happy doing this

Photos and screenshots are coming soon,

There are many older Motorola radios in circulation, generally because these radios have been replaced by the original business users for newer radios based on DMR or NXDN, to use these on Amateur radio frequencies requires the programming software and a suitable computer to run it on, due to the retro computing scene most computers of a suitable vintage generally are expensive and those that are cheap generally need work to get them going, but there is a way around this.

Oracle have a free to use piece of software for Windows, Linux and Mac OS called VirtualBox and this can be used to run legacy operating systems from MS DOS right up to Windows XP, I won't tell you where to get these from, that's up to you to source them, my experience has told me that GM350s require Windows 3.1 to program them and other newer radios should program on Windows XP without issue, programming cables are obtainable from Amazon and eBay, or you can make one yourself (I did this for the Motorola GM350 following instructions from George Smart M1GEO).

To begin, you need to install VirtualBox if you have not done so, this is a free download from their website, follow the link for your OS/hardware on your physical computer, this will download the installer or give you instructions on how to proceed next to download and install VirtualBox.

Once the install is complete, obtain a copy of Windows that is suitable (Windows 3.1 does require MS-DOS so make sure you have that to hand as well) and configure a virtual machine, your install media will either be .img or .iso if you have downloaded it, the latter is a CD/DVD image, the former is normally floppy disk images, VirtualBox allows you to set up a machine based on the OS you want to install on it, once you have done that then install the operating system.

If for some reason you get an error then it could potentially be that virtualisation is not enabled on your computer, this is usually a setting in the UEFI configuration, with my Lenovo laptop this didn't appear to be needed, with my home build desktop I did have to enable this, every computer is different, to get into the configuration refer to the manual for your computer or motherboard, but it is usually "Delete" or "F2" when you power the computer on.

When you have installed the Operating System you will want to then install the programming software for the radio, as the virtual machine cannot access your physical computer's hard disk you may need to create a disk image for the programming software, creating disk images is beyond the scope of this guide, once you have done this mount the disk image in the virtual machine and either copy the files to the virtual machine or run an installer, the GM350 software I have required copying to the virtual machine's virtual hard drive, the software for the GP340Ex was installed from an installer.

Next you will need to shut down the virtual machine and plug your programming cable in, beware if the cable is based on a Prolific chip (many are) and you are using Windows as there is a good chance it will not work without using old drivers, it is at this point we need to know the serial port the USB cable is showing, in the VirtualBox manager select "settings" on the virtual machine, then select "Serial ports", you will be presented with 4 tabs, use any of these, tick the box to enable it, "Port mode" should be set to "Host device", on a Windows system the port you need to enter into the box "Path/Address" can be found in the device manager under "Ports (COM & LPT)", on Linux systems it is found using the "ls /dev" command, on a Windows host the port would be COM# (where # is a number), on Linux hosts it is usually /dev/ttyUSB# (again where # is a number but it should be /dev/ttyUSB0 if no other USB serial devices are plugged in), I cannot comment on Mac OS as I'm not familiar with the OS at all, a search engine can help you here.

Make sure you click OK to save the changes and that the device is plugged into the computer before you start the virtual machine or it will come up with an error, once the Windows installation on the virtual machine has started then you'll need to look for the COM port inside there, it'll be something like COM2, as the system may have reserved COM1 elsewhere, as far as the virtual machine is concerned the device is a physical COM port even though it is not, connect the radio and power it on, run the programming software and attempt a read from the radio, if it fails then change the COM port number, it it is successful it is working and you can program the radio for use on your frequencies, in this case Amateur radio but these radios can still be used on the business bands, and while the UHF variants can (in most cases) cover PMR446 it wouldn't be legal to use them there but you do this at your own risk.

The programming software for Motorola radios works differently to software like CHIRP, you have to set the transmit and receive frequencies independently, on business bands the frequencies are usually one for transmit and one for receive in most instances, there are other settings as well in the software that can be changed that have no relevance to Amateur radio use, these can range from emergency alarms, encryption if the radio is so equipped to use it, 2-tone and other similar options.

The version of the GM350 software I have crashes if you input CTCSS (PL) or DCS (DPL) on the "Per Channel" screen, a workaround for this is the "Overview" page so if you find this software then set everything else on the "Per Channel page then set the CTCSS on the overview.