Hi Tom,

Thank you for attaching the image files. From looking that them I now know exactly what the problem is. Unfortunately I have no idea at this time what the root cause of the problem is.

The image sent to the radio has the correct band limits for the radio (136-174 MHz and 400-470 MHz), but something is overwriting bytes 2 though 8 of the 8 bytes that store the band limits.

There are other minor differences between the #2 and #3 file. For example the (A) VFO frequency change from 400.000 MHz to 473.490 MHz and the selected channel number changed. I assume you turned some knobs or pressed some buttons prior downloading back to CHIRP. Would you send #2 to the radio again and immediately (without turning any knobs or pressing any buttons on the radio) download back to CHIRP and attach it as #4?

Thanks,
Jim KC9HI

Tom,

Thanks for the additional file. Everything between the #2 and #4 file is identical except for the 7 overwritten bytes.

I can't believe CHIRP is doing it or it would the same thing would happen when I upload to my UV-B5. I'm still going to see about getting a serial capture log of an upload to my UV-B5 validate that the correct 8 bytes are being sent to the radio.

Would you mind trying an upload with the factory software to see if the same thing occurs after and upload?

Jim

Tom,

CHIRP does indeed send the correct band limits to the radio. So something after the band limits are sent to your radio is overwriting the band limits during the remainder of the cloning process or right at the time the upload is completed.

Does your UV-B5 have 29 menus like mine or is it one with only 27 menus?

Jim

Hi Jim,

"Would you mind trying an upload with the factory software to see if the same thing occurs after and upload?' - When I use the factory software everything appears to be fine. When I use chirp, cause 'the issue', then use the factory software, the issue remains. Is that what you mean?

Mine is a 27 menu version.

Tom,

I'm not sure where to go from here. We probably need a serial port capture of CHIRP uploading to your radio. Do you have access to a Windows 7 32-bit or older computer that you could install CHIRP and Microsoft's Portmon program?

Jim

Hi Jim,

No I only have Linux and some Windows 10 machines. It looks like I can use something like socat or interceptty to capture the serial port traffic, I have some something similar before using socat.

I will see if I can get that going and report back.

Tom Haslett wrote:

So I managed to get it going. Below is how I did it in case it helps anyone in future:

interceptty /dev/ttyUSB0 /dev/ttycbg | tee ~/uvb5.txt¶

Attached is the output, does this look like what PortMon would provide? Is it helpful?

Nice. It is not in the Portmon format that I am used to, but after studying it some I was able to find what I was looking for. CHIRP does send the complete set of band limits to your radio as expected (lines 5066-5073).

5066 < 0x60 (`)
5067 < 0x13 ([DC3])
5068 < 0x40 (@)
5069 < 0x17 ([ETB])
5070 < 0x00 ([NUL])
5071 < 0x40 (@)
5072 < 0x00 ([NUL])
5073 < 0x48 (H)

Looking at the remainder of the upload I don't see anything that would indicate that CHIRP was overwriting the band limits.

Essentially what is happening to your radio is that something is changing lines 5069 to 5073 to "0xff" corrupting your radio's band limits.

I noticed that my CHIRP development computer didn't have the latest CHIRP daily build installed so I updated CHIRP and repeated the tests with my UV-B5. Nothing has changed here. My UV-B6 still functions and operates normally.

One difference I did see between your radio and mine (besides the number of menus) was that the band limits in your are set to VHF: 136-174 MHz and UHF: 400-480 MHz (well at least until they get corrupted) and the band limits in my radio are set to VHF: 136-174 and UHF: 400-520 MHz.

Hi Jim,

It almost sounds like the radio itself could be doing this to itself? Is the 27 menus a significant difference? Perhaps this is a new version with something different about it?

It doesn't sound like there is anywhere to go from here, let me know if there is anything else I can provide. Thank you for looking into this!

Tom - M6THZ.

Tom, Jim,

My Baofeng UV-B5 (29 menu version from about 2015) is behaving similarly with the new CHIRP. I've used chirp-daily-20210406 for years to read and write data. Today I downloaded and used chirp-next-20241101, and downloading the radio data to my PC killed the radio audio. No noise when I open squelch. All the buttons work. Display works. But no audio.

I'm really happy Tom mentioned the reset option to hold MENU down while powering on. That brought my radio back to life. I successfully uploaded my radio data using the image I had prior saved.

Not sure I want to try the new edition of chirp again. It's confusing to me that downloading the data FROM the radio seems to have killed the audio because that shouldn't have changed anything on the radio. If I get brave, I'll try to isolate the problem more, but wanted to get your input in case something has changed since this thread was updated.

When the audio quit (see post I did just a few minutes ago), I also found this reference https://www.reddit.com/r/Baofeng/comments/57lw9e/uvb5_no_audio_repair/?rdt=34465, which is about real audio hardware failure. I was convinced I'd have to open the radio and start soldering things.

The radio MENU reset optioned saved me from bricking my radio :-)