RVR TEX300LCD built-in RDS encoder (P232) board setup

[andrew01]

Hi!
I have been recently helping a fellow colleague with his "new-old" secondhand RVR TEX300LCD (/RDS-TEX2HE) with a integrated P232 RDS Encoder (from the schematics)
We don't have the original WINRDS+ software CD, so we are using Magic RDS 4 configured as a Generic UECP encoder (as we have tried to set it up as an P232 and it would not send anything at all).

UECP communication is working. We can successfully read/write data, and any changes I make to the PI code and Radiotext update perfectly.
However, we cannot get rid of the old Dynamic PS. 

Whatever scrolling text was programmed into this board years ago (presumably using WINRDS+) from the old broadcaster is stuck looping. Even though Magic RDS 4 shows the new PS as being "sent", the board does not want to comply and just keeps on sending the old text that was programmed before...

Any help is appreciated, but mostly, is there any mode to fully flush the EEPROM from that old dynamic PS?
Thank you 

[Jan]

It is true that we have supplied a certain amount of P232 chips to R.V.R. in the past, but the cooperation was terminated because they violated the terms of business and subsequently stopped communicating.

Unfortunately, I do not know the technical details of their implementation. If your device really has a P232 chip and UECP communication works for you, then the P232 model must also work. Unless someone blocked ASCII commands using the PAC function. However, this is normally not possible to do from the port on which communication is being carried out, it would have to be done from the other communication port. Moreover, this blocking cannot be performed at all on one of the ports. I do not know which communication ports are accessible in this device.

Try both communication ports, if possible. Communication must always work on one of the ports, it cannot be blocked by any setting. If only one port is accessible on the panel and it is the blocked one, you can also solve the situation by replacing the EEPROM (24LC512/M24512).

See also Magic RDS 4 Help - devices.pdf

[andrew01]

Hi Jan,

As far as our tests that we have done, only via the SERVICE/RDS port we could send PI and Radiotext commands via UECP only as mentioned, I have looked in the manual and attached a picture of the setup embedded in the transmitter. Before sending UECP, we looked at the RDS sequence that the former station had, and we observed a lot of interesting stuff, such as : Slow Labelling Codes found on Group 1A: Specific application developed by the broadcaster + Unassigned SLC + Language Identification Code + Paging identification + TMC identification + Extended Country Code + EWS channel identification , and a 13B ODA, we have also observed losses of the groups. After a successful attempt to connect, we could send a proper sequence, but we still have group losses.

I was hoping you would have their WINRDS+ software that the manual advises for this exact model with UECP, the other module that they offer advises Magic RDS 3 to be used. Sadly, their support team is not exactly useful, as my colleague contacted them in the past for another issue and they spoke a very broken english, they didn't understand what he wanted from them.

[Jan]

From what you say, I get the feeling that there is no P232 inside the device at all, but a different encoder. I probably wouldn't rely on what they have in the documentation.

I'll tell you a trick on how to find out with a relatively high degree of reliability whether the RDS encoder is from Pira.cz. If you have the opportunity to view the output RDS data in the RDS Spy program, our encoders were optimized for transmitting dynamic PS and therefore groups 0A are always transmitted in fours, and the first group always contains the first PS segment.

2A 2A 0A 0A 0A 0A 2A 2A 0A 0A 0A 0A <- this may be PIRA
2A 0A 0A 2A 0A 0A 2A 0A 0A <- this is not PIRA

If you can access the board under cover, it is possible to say more precisely what is actually inside.

[andrew01]

It is probably a encoder from PIRA, the old sequence had 4x 0A 2x 1A 2x 2A and that 13B ODA, plus some random 0B groups, but just to be sure we will open the transmitter, when my colleague has time 

Unrelated to the issue we are having, but is it possible to add a option in Magic RDS to make your own RDS sequence (like 0A,2A,0A,10A,2A,etc.) aswell as PIRA's 022R... modes in the P132,232,332, etc. pages? I have only seen 0 which is 4 0As sent, we want to send something more refined, (we would like to put the sequence as 0A 2A for now) if we can finally find a way to properly send info. 

[Jan]

It is pointless to insist on the exact group sequence. As the RDS standard says, the decoder must be able to process any stream regardless of the order of the groups anyway. The only thing that matters is the ratio of groups of a certain type. So whether you have 4x 0A and 4x 2A or 0A 2A at the output, there is no difference at all. The first case only has the specific advantage that you can rewrite the entire PS faster. For reasons of maintaining compatibility, no further changes are possible in existing system.