I have started work on figuring out if Irclone can be used with the URC-200. There's good and bad news. I'm pretty sure that it can be but Irclone will need to be modified. I haven't finished figuring it all out yet but I have been able to upload from the remote. There is about ten times as much data as the MX-500/600. I have been able to start the download process but as I don't know all the answers yet it caused my URC-200 to lose the characters on the cloning control screen.

I could do with a favor from anyone in the Bay Area near San Jose who has a URC-200 and is prepared to meet with me this weekend so that I can download from their remote to mine to see if this will clear up the problem. If you can help out please email me at [email protected].

Mike C

This is very interesting. Do you think the hardware itself will have to change, or just the software?

Sean

Given the different button and screen layout it is a given that the editor software would have to change. This is also a given in light of the fact that there is ten times as much data coming out of the 200 versus the 500/600.

I was able to fix the corruption problem simply by erasing the enitire Automator by pressing the MAIN and STOP butons for ten seconds and when the RESET screen appeared I pressed the SURE? button per page 27 of the instructions. This is somewhat of a relief because if something were to go wrong during a download I did not want to be liable for replacing corrupted remotes. Also I don't need the favor I previously asked for.

I have been able to partly figure out the memory structure, i.e. how it is broken down into blocks. I can see the area where all the labels are stored and it appears that pretty much all the labels would be software programmable even the titles on each page and the instructions at the bottom. I don't exactly know which label belongs to which page but I will be working on that slowly. I don't think URC wants me messing around with this as they did not use just a straight binary representation of the label characters, as they did with the 500/600, but converted them using the 2's complement method so I couldn't see them straight off. They have also changed the error protection code which prevents bad data from being cloned so I have to figure that out too.

The actual hardware I use contains a small controller chip which I created the "firmware" for. At this stage I don't think the hardware has to change but the firmware certainly needs to be. This means that I would probably be able to reprogram an existing Irclone for those who are interested. I might also be able to provide an upload/download utility, like before, for those who might be interested in just saving their configuration to the PC. I cannot promise anything yet. I'd be interested in your thoughts and opinions.

Mike