I recently purchased a digirig and the Yaesu and Icom 9600 baud MiniDin6 audio cable for use with my Icom IC-208H mobile radio. I was able to get it working with WinLink using Soundmodem and Dire Wolf without much trouble. Very happy with the product. Can I use this same setup to program by Icom using Chirp? I noticed some of the cable sets (like for the BaoFeng) come with a second cable (green connector) that it is noted can be used with Chirp. I saw no mention for my cable. Do I just need to move it from audio to serial port on the digirig or is that a bad idea?
The programming will involve the use of the serial port, but this also requires the use of a cable with different pinout. Like in case of Baofeng, there are two cables: one for audio+PTT and another cable for programming. Currently I don’t have programming cable for IC-208H available in store. I can look further into this to research the pinout if you are interested in a homebrew building it for your radio.
Yes, I would be very interested.
I did some googling and it looks like the standard programming cable for IC-208H is called OPC-478. The transceiver side connector is 3.5mm TRS.
I found several homebrew projects for this cable. It looks like there’s a single data line that is essentially a CI-V signal:
You can recreate the same with Digirig in CI-V configuration with a cable like this:
3.5mm TRRS or TRS on Digirig’s side (A) and 3.5mm TRS on transceiver side (B)
A sleeve → B sleeve
A tip → B ring1
Let me know the result if you end up building this.
Would this be the same as the OPC-474 radio-to-radio cloning cable that ICOM sells/sold? Here is one at https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/ico-opc-474. Amazon had one for $17 too.
Without the pinout/schematic I’ll have to guess, but my guess is that this is not the same cable because here the cable is asymmetric and OPC-474 doesn’t offer any visual clues as to what side goes where.
Maybe something like this Amazon.com
2 3.5" TRS plugs with bare wires on the other end. The photos show which color is connected to which ring. I could connect them as needed, labeling the end for the radio vs the end that connects to the Digirig serial port.
I found this photo that describes a mono, stereo, and stereo/mic plug:
Yes, that’s all the material that you need for the homebrew build.
Please keep us posted on your progress.