Astro Spectra PLUS with USB connector?

[HA5BRG]

Hi all,

Yesterday I received my first AS+ Vocon with 4MB memory. It works fine, no problem with that. I have opened the Detailed Service Manual to take a look at the schematics....and look what I've found:

USB CONNECTOR on the Vocon...

Anybode has some any info regarding this? According to the schematics, it seems like a full-feature, real USB port what is used in personal computers.


Thanks in advance.

 

[Alpha]

Interesting. Those are bed-of-nails pads for the factory robot, most likely. That would allow fastest initialization of the VOCONs on a production line. Once initialized, the thing is slapped into the regular Astro Spectra armored shell and there is no further access to the port.

It might be fun to break them out so you could use a USB cable, but the ASTRO25 USB cables have a 1-wire chip in them to prevent cloning so you'd have to build an alternate connector on an existing USB cable or something. It would get you faster programming, but that's probably about all.

 

[HA5BRG]

Only faster programming, nothing esle? Sounds sad. It seemed so promising

 

[Magnus]

It might be fun to break them out so you could use a USB cable, but the ASTRO25 USB cables have a 1-wire chip in them to prevent cloning so you'd have to build an alternate connector on an existing USB cable or something.

I'm willing to bet that this connection would not need a 1-wire chip. The main reason behind the 1-wire chip is to identify the cable to the radio, this is because most of those particular interfaces are multipurpose and need to be configured to work as a USB device. It's not to prevent homemade cables, just a side effect that I'm sure they enjoy. Remember the USB on the rear of the XTL doe not need a 1-wire chip because it is a dedicated interface, like this.

 

[com501]

This is most probably the primary JTAG port for the entire board. I would bet you could write any portion of the non-volatile operating system parameters from this point, and probably read some of them too, if you knew the protocol.

 

[Alpha]

No, it's USB. JTAG are 10 or more pin connectors (usually) and have totally different signal names. I'm pretty sure it's a Mfr-only USB connector for the initial programming. On the XTL series they broke out those signals to the external connectors for regular programming via USB, but since the Astro Spectra frames had no USB pins, there was nowhere to go with it.

 

[com501]

Interesting that they would use USB instead of a direct connection like a JTAG header. I wonder if the HP tools software would be able to read the original programming, like it can for other depot radios. Something to experiment with when it snows...

 

[Magnus]

What HP tools software?