Hi my friends,
I have, after two hours of research last night, found a driver that is
updated for the data cable for the BAOFENG UV-3R. Here is a good page for
your information.
http://radioinc.com/Baofeng/software/UV-3R/
Do not use the Windows XP driver provided in the page above, you will get an
error that a device system file is missing after you insert the Prolific USB
to serial adapter. The specific issue is that Windows XP will come up and
ask for a missing file : after inserting the USB to serial adapter cable :
the following comes up": ser2pl.sys is missing.
I have read both the Yahoo groups document and gone through the web site
www.uv3r.com and had not found the updated driver until I went to the
following page and read through all the threads.
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_vista-hardware/prol
ific-pl2303-usb-to-serial-port-adapter-driver/1902e9e0-4af0-4f36-84bc-f487d4
022f1f
This USB to Serial adapter I have is the PL-2303 and, according to Prolific
will be Phased out of support this month. Please consider looking at the
Prolific web site before purchasing a USB to Serial Adapter for your BAOFENG
radio. Prolific has indicated that they will phase out support for this
particular chipset. When making a purchasing decision, I would suggest
reading about the cable before purchasing it. Prolific will support devices
that are still under their support umbrella. Once Chipsets are phased out
of support, it becomes more difficult to make them work. Thus, I suspect
that these cables will be selling cheaper if there are still lots of them
around. Prolific will not support this chipset of the 2303 in Windows 8
either.
One more gocha: the BAOFEGN programming software writes a file to the
Program files\UV3R\ folder called setting.ini in which basic settings are
written such as COM port. This type of writing to Program Files folder will
not be allowed in Windows 8. Thus, if you have a BAOFENG radio and are
using the programming software and this programming software still writes to
the program folder, you might not be able to make it work in Windows 8.
In the first link I provided above, there is a link to the Prolific web
site. However, use the Microsoft link I provided to get what you need.
Prolific has changed their web site and they will redirect you to another
site.When you get to that site, there is a user ID and password field and yu
must enter guest for both fields. User = guest, password guest. (here is
the direct link if you don't want to go up and read it againJ
http://www.prolific.com.tw/eng/downloads.asp?ID=31
For those that are running Windows 7, there is an issue with the Prolific
driver where after loading the driver, an error 10 appears in Device
Manager. To solve this error 10, you must use the prior driver version and
the Windows Vista version of that driver. You might find this driver by
following the links in the first URL I provided above. You might actually
find the driver in this Microsoft Community link:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=69157
Ok, so now moving along to my issue after all this work and research. I was
successful in installing the driver that I downloaded from the Prolific web
site. By the way, if you had installed a driver prior to the one on the
Prolific web site, the latest driver will uninstall the prior one, allow
it. This is all Windows XP for what I am working on. Once the driver
installs, you will see a Prolific device under Ports in device manager. The
device will be assigned a COM port, in my case, COM4.
Here is my issue:
The UV-3r software has been installed on my system, version 1.11 and BTW,
the software is at its latest. The link that I provided first in this
e-mail gives you the web site to check and I checked and have the latest.
Here is the web site.
http://powerphone.com.cn/en/khfw.asp?1
When I go to device manager, I see the device Prolific and its COMM port as
4. The gotcha is that the programming software only allows COM ports that
it can see. For some reason, COM4 is not seen as available by the UV-3R
software. So, I decided to make some changes to try some things. Here is
what I tried and nothing worked:
1. Went to device manager, right clicked on the Prolific Device under
Ports, selected propreties, went to the Ports Tab, opened the advanced
options, changed the Port to COM2 which was available and restarted.
2. When I went to the UV-3R software, the port was not available to
choose from. At this time, I only have COM1 and COM3 available which is
true. COM1 is a built in COM port in the machine and COM3 is another
adapter I have.
3. Ok, so I decided to change the COM PORT to another available port
using the steps in #1, changed it to COM7. No cigar! Don't forget I
rebooted.
4. By the way, selecting the COM port in the UV-3R software works well
with JAWS. Simply, Go to Settings and choose the options to change the com
port and you arrow up. The COM ports that are available do show up and are
not grayed out / disabled.
5. At this time, all seems to be ok with the hardware. The computer
sees the device and it has been assigned a com port. I have COM2 available
on my system and the only com ports that are not available to assign to new
devices are COM1 and COM3 which the UV-3R software sees.
6. Oh, one more thing I tried because I figured it was good to try. I
have the Prolific USB to Serial adapter set to COM4 now. I opened the
C:\Program Files\UV3r\Setting.ini file and modified the COM port setup under
[Setup] to match the COM PORT that the computer says the Prolific device is
on. Well, nothing happens other than an error that the radio could not be
found.
7. I did follow the procedure: Insert USB to serial cable, wait for
recognition, plug in the radio, turn on the radio.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
73,
Jose - KK4JZX
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