The actual Memofile Programmer unit is shown above, and this is one of only 12 made. Effectively, it is a prototype, and is hand made, the case presumably being a project/hobby box of some kind, fitting together nicely, with rubber feet to stop it sliding about, but modified and screen printed to a high standard. The circuit board inside, however, is an etched PCB with the read/write LED and chip mount soldered directly to it, and wired to the switch, battery holder, external power socket and 25 pin parallel port socket. Doubtless, some changes would have been made before final production had been reached. As it stands, the case has to be opened by undoing the 4 screws on the underside, in order to change the battery, a PP3/6LR61/MN1604 9V battery. I'm sure a production version would have had a battery door for easier changing, and also a more "designed in" switch, perhaps like the Local/DX and Ext. Antenna switches on the 700. I also suspect the chip mount, which is the same as the ones found under the pop-off cover on the 700, would have had a cover over it.
At the top end, with reference to the above photo, are 2 sockets. Firstly the 25 pin connector, which is plugged into the parallel port on your computer, using a standard parallel port lead. Secondly is a DC input socket, of the same size and polarity as the one on the Satellit 700, so you can use the NR90 to power it if using it a lot, or to save the cost and hassle of buying and changing batteries. the socket is marked "DC 8-18 V" which is quite a range! The "Data Read/Write" LED illuminates when data is being transferred from computer to chip or vice versa, and the black dot by the lower right corner of the chip mount denotes pin 1, which is marked with a dimple on the chip. The On/Off switch is visible at the bottom of the photo. Total size of the unit is 138mm long, including sockets and switch, 64mm wide, and 47mm high, including the chip mounting socket.
The software was supplied on floppy disc, and while this may seem a little odd nowadays, remember that this unit was made in 1992, and we didn't even have Windows 95 then (obviously!). The actual programme is quite small, only 144 k/b, and comes with a small help file (in German) and an Icon for your desktop. Despite being at the early stages of Windows, it works very well, and runs happily on the Windows 95, 98 & XP machines I've tried it on. Getting it working was easy, simply copy to a folder on the machine, create a shortcut, drag that to your desktop, and change the icon to the one supplied. Set the machine to open file types of .smf with this program, (.smf = Satellit Memo Files) and away you go. No difficult setting up, nor any problem with the port allocation, at least not in my case, it worked first time. It all seems very well written, bug & headache free, and intuitive. It took no time to work out how to read and write chips, and all that was needed to connect the computer was to pull the plug out of my printer and connect it into the memofile unit.
Incidentally, the software is very well thought out, as it won't allow you to programme in frequencies that the radio cannot tune to. I've tried, and it matches the 700's coverage exactly! For example, you can programme 30000.9 kHz into it. I suspect you don't even know that the 700 can tune that frequency, do you? It says 30000 kHz on the back, and in the manual, right? So, enter 30000 and press the Frequency/M-Band button. Now, press either Synch, USB or LSB. Now tune up using the tuning knob. It goes to 30000.9, see! The Memofile Programmer software does too.
So, why have this system, when you can compile the chips in the radio itself? Well, there are several reasons. Not least of which is that, while compiling the chips in the radio, you can't listen to it! The software also allows you to cut, copy and paste, thus allowing editing of the files to be quick and easy. It even has it's own clipboard, which you could save as a file having clipped items from other files. You also have the advantage of being able to view the whole chip, in terms of the station names, and a whole slot, in terms of frequencies, and settings (Mono/Stereo, Wide/Narrow, LSB/USB/Synch) at a time.
In addition, it allows you to make backups of your chips on the computer, in case you accidentally hit "copy" in the radio, or have some other mishap, like a static discharge while handling the chip, that deletes some or all of the contents of a precious chip. It allows you to swap chip contents without swapping chips (Not so much of a problem these days, but back in the early 90's, memory chips were much dearer) and now, it allows you to swap chip contents by e-mail, which was pretty rare back in 1992! It even allows you to have several sets of memory files, without having the chips, as you only need the one chip, to copy the contents onto as and when you want to use them. It also saves wear and tear on the radio.
One further reason for creating this unit was to make it easier for Grundig partners to make chips for selleing to the public, the obvious example being Siebel Verlag, who issued several chips on the early days of the Satellit 700 being put on the market. On the floppy disc with the software, were several memofile compilations, which were clearly ones that Siebel Verlag issued at the time. While I guess they were copyright at the time, though that can be argued against, since all the frequencies were in the public domain, it was only the collection of those frequencies that had been done by the compilers. In any case, all these years later, the frequencies are in many cases no longer applicable, so sharing them with you should not infringe any realistic copyright. Luckily, one other facility offered by the memofile programmer is that you can save the chip contents as .asc files, handy for viewing on screen or printing out, though the .asc files do not include the settings (Wide/Narrow/USB/LSB/Synch/Mono/Stereo). Wordpad or Notepad are both capable of viewing/printing these files. Therefore, I have put all these files in a zip file, so you can see the original Siebel Verlag files, and print them if you wish. The files when unzipped are as shown below, open each filename, and you will see the memofile name (the name that displays when you push and hold the "Memory File" button on your Satellit 700, assuming you've allocated a name) at the top of the page. The date of creation of all the files was 31st March 1992, between 7 and 8 am!
Sieb_a1.asc, URLAUB,
Sieb_a2.asc, DEUTSCH,
Sieb_a3.asc, ENGLISH,
Sieb_a4.asc, FRANCAIS,
Sieb_a5.asc, AFRIKA,
Sieb_a6.asc, TROPENBA,
Sieb_a7.asc, LATEINAM,
Click
here to download zipfile.
For more, and better,
pictures of the unit, visit the Satellit
700 website of Thomas Baier, who got this unit for me, and for which
I'd like to publicly thank him! When you get to his site, click on the
"Memofiles" link on the left.
A final note: I've had
one or two requests for copies of the software. While it's true that I
do have the software, and can copy it easily, it is a licenced copy I have,
and to copy it for others breaks the licence agreement. In the interests
of the goodwill of the software writer, to whom I am indebted, I will have
to refuse such requests. Sorry.
Basically, Christoph has created a memofile programmer software package that does the same job, and runs in Java. You will need to download his memofile application, and the Java software if you don't already have it. Now, Christoph doesn't use MS Windows, hence the complete package being available for several other platforms (Linux/Unix and so on) and so there are a couple of minor complications for those of use who do, and one massive one for XP users! The main drawback non XP Windows users will experience is that you will find the options offered when you use the "file" tab at the top of the window does not include "Import from EEPROM" & "Export to EEPROM" as shown on his screenshots. In order to activate these, you will need to download the separate "Prog84" programme linked from the bottom of his page, which you will have to include in the same folder as the memofile writer programme, it should then import & export the files from chip to programme, and then open or save the files using his software.
Now, XP users will likely find that while the options to import and export are available when using the programming software, they won't actually work! Symtoms? 2 bleeps from your PC when you open the programme, software appears to run but chip is not written or chip contents do not appear in software, message boxes do not close, there may be more. (Note, opening and saving files to disc, and editing them is not a problem). Basically, the problem appears to be that XP does not operate the serial port directly like old MS-Dos based versions of Windows did (Windows 95, 98 and 2000 were all based on MS-Dos, XP is the first that is not). Stangely, the only XP based PC Christoph has access to, a laptop, does work, so whether there's a difference between desktop and Laptop versions of XP, or some hardware difference between the 2 machine's method of utilising the serial port, I don't know. If anyone does know, we'd love to hear from you.
After 6 weeks of effort and Frustration, I have finally found a way to write file contents to a chip, (and I'm still trying to write the chip contents to file!), but it's rather a complicated one. I have had to download Boot622 from the web at this site, when you run this .exe file, it ask you to install a floppy disc, which it then writes a boot disc to, and you use this to reboot the PC. You will need to have all the prog84 files on an accessible disc while you are running Dos622, this may be a hard disc or in my case a CD drive. You need to know a few DOS basics like moving between drives and directories (The CD command) and listing directory contents (The DIR command). You can then write chips from file or create files from chips using the following commands:
To write a file to a chip: prog84 -v -a -T 2416 -x filename.suf where filename.suf is the file you wish to write to chip. Remember, DOS only works for filenames with 8 or less prefix characters, and 3 or less suffix characters, the suffix is likely to be .mfp or.hex for most files you are going to use. If filenames are longer than 8 characters, rename them before quitting Windows! Remember to include drive/directory details in the command line if you are reading a file from a different drive/directory, eg, a:filename.suf
To read a chip and save to disc (if you cannot access your hard discs, you'll have to write it to the floppy, which should hold about 8 files in addition to the boot files.) dump84 -a > filename.suf (I haven't been able to get this to work yet!!!)
You can now reboot the machine to Windows (shut down, remove floppy until machine has restarted, and restart. Now you can edit files in the programme.
There is also a programme called "IC-prog" linked from his site, which appears able to do one other useful thing though. It can open files saved from the original Grundig memofile programmer, in it's own unique format, and save them again in .hex format, the standard format used by his programme, prog84 and the IC-prog.
All the sotware is free,
and the actual memofile programme created by Christoph is approved by Grundig,
though as it says on his page, they offer no support, questions should
go to either him or myself. The only expenditure is on the actual hardware
to connect the chip to the computer. Now, you can spend £hundreds
of pounds Sterling on an EEPROM programmer, but that is money wasted, because
less than £10 will suffice.
An Ebay search is included
on Christoph's website, but both he & I, and other people I know, obtained
ours from Ebay seller "Kuzito"
(click the name to see his auctions) and he ships worldwide from Bulgaria,
accepts Paypal, and after that, all you need is a Serial port cable to
hook it into your computer. Note, you need the 24C16 programmer as shown
in the photo, he sells other versions too, which will not meet your needs.
One more thing about this programmer: You insert the chip with the top
(as fitted in a Satellit 700) at the top as viewed in the photo, ie/ The
dot should be near the 16 pin socket next to the 8 pin socket that you
actually use. To make things even clearer, the chip has a small crescent
cut into it at one end, and so does the socket, you just need to line these
up before fitting.
So, come on folks, get the resources installed on your computer, and lets get our memofile contents flowing on the web (file size is typically only 6k/b) and make the Grundig Satellit 700 the only portable radio whose memory contents can be exchanged online. Christoph is maintaining a page of memofile files for download, and he'd be grateful for those that you can send him. Note, all files are to be for free use by anyone, we don't want to see these files being sold online loaded into chips, and will persue anyone who does this. There are 2 files created by me at the memofile page on Christoph's site, both based on WRTH listings, one is English language stations, sorted by country of origin, & broadcasting to, or frequently receivable in Europe, the file is called "engeu.mfp", the other is pretty much the same, but sorted by time of broadcast, so you have staions grouped under 00 UTC, 01 UTC and so on. There is inevitably some duplication on this chip, as stations may be one for a few hours, off and then come back on again, and also some stay on more than an hour, so you may find a station at, say, 13 UTC, still working at 15 UTC. This file is called "engeutim.mfp" and includes some frequencies to North America too. Text listings for both are also on the page, but if you have Christoph's programme, you can print it from the actual file anyway.
Remember, with this programmer,
you can:
a/ Backup memory contents
from your 700 (Though I've never known anyone lose file contents, the chips
are guaranteed secure for 200 years, assuming no outside influence (static
discharge/heat and so on).
b/ have several files
but only one chip (reload it as you need it with alternative file contents)
c/ exchange files with
other users.
d/ pre-load memory files
for remote locations before you travel there, your radio will be ready
for the local FM stations etc.
My thanks for getting me this far go to Christoph Lorenz, who has undergone repeated questioning by me due to Windows XP being unable to operate the serial port, Ron Ingram, Satellit collector and enthusiast for continued support and suggestions, and Karl Szczypta, Computer whiz, who recommended Dos 622 to me, finally proving that my serial port, the cable, and even the Ludipipo programmer weren't faulty! 3 great guys!
And if you aren't lucky
enough to own a Satellit 700, such PC-interfacery is still posssible! If
you have a Sangean 909, Radio Shack 398, or one of the other clones (Roberts
for example) visit http://www.ats909programer.com
- the work of Tomas Ramirez, there you willl find out how to interface your
radio with a PC. This will allow you to save memories to and from your
radio! Visit them now to find out more!