Bigger Isn't Always Better

Bigger Isn’t Always Better

When you buy a new television, stereo or sometimes vacuum cleaners and lamps, … bigger might be better. With computers this isn’t always true. You really have to be careful. A bigger, faster computer is great for making music CD’s or working with home movies. A bigger computer is also great for corporate use where storing and retrieving enormous volumes of data is needed everyday, all day long. If you’re into gaming, you probably want the biggest, fastest computer you can get. A gaming computer.

There are some good reasons for not having access to such big computers. In fact reasons to have slow computers with small processors are preferred.

One reason for having a slow computer is in the profession of two way radio service. That’s right. Two way radio’s now days no longer have crystals in them like the old days. Today the two way radio’s found in taxi cabs, fire trucks, police cars, buses and security services are all ‘programmable radio’s. They don’t use crystals anymore.

Now when you buy a two way radio, it comes with a CD and a programming cable to connect it to a computer so you can program the radio to the frequency on your FCC license. BUT WATCH OUT! If you use a everyday computer with Windows on it to do this, you may ruin the radio. At $700.00 to $2000.00 a radio can you afford to do this? Probably not.

Most RSS software is meant to be used with a MS-DOS operating system on a computer that runs nice and slow. This is why two way radio shops buy up 286, 386 and 486 computers with slow processors. Vintage computers like this if found at places like Ebay, don’t list long if they still work, because radio programmers are buying them up.

When programming a two way radio, keep in mind the radio, although its transistorized, it is not a actual computing device. It can’t be force fed. It needs a little more time to process what you’re doing. The perfect computers to program two way radios are the old 286, 386 and some 486 computers running MS-DOS, not Windows.

Think of it this way. A human beings mouth is the one place that takes things in to be processed as nutrients. When you or I eat a double whopper, it takes minutes to do so. Although the whole sandwich is there, it takes time to put it away. You wouldn’t try to swallow the whole double whopper in one gulp, what would happen? You would get it stuck and you would die. Programming two way radios holds the same principle. It has to be slow and steady.

I watched someone burn up a really nice Motorola Saber because he used a Windows computer to try and program the radio. I told him not to do it because his computer was to fast for the radio. He insisted he knew what he was doing. So I sat in the arm chair across the room and watched. It didn’t take very long before he was at a pause of surprise. He picked up the radio trying the switches and tapping it, … then slowly looking over his shoulder at me. I simply said “congratulations you’ve just reinvented the brick”. He said “I’ll get it fixed”. He called the local Motorola center and walked them through everything he did, then hung up in disappointment as I said “Well!”. He said “They told me the radio is junk. It can’t be fixed”.

Bigger isn’t always better. When programming two way radios, use a old slow computer that doesn’t have Windows on it. This is one example why I personally keep vintage working computers on hand. You never know when you will need them.

Reporter Joseph Toth

Washington Micro Bank BBS