Text93 Information Page

Questions or comments- email: Win93@starrsoft.com

Though it is free to use, Text93 is copyrighted software. Please read the License Agreement.

Text93 is a command-line alternative to the GUI program Win93. It allows you to upload to and download from the PRO-93. It will read and write both .P93 and .TXT files (format of the .TXT file described below). It will also convert between the two file formats.

Everything you can do in Text93 can be done in Win93, and vice-versa. Text93 was originally written to test out different pieces of Win93's functionality before the GUI app was actually started. It lives on because there are some people (you know who you are) that prefer a command-line interface instead of the "clicky-pointy-mousey drivel", to quote a certain command-line fan.

Both Text93 and Win93 read and write the same text files. For the rest of this document, I refer to them simply as "the programs".

Important: The programs do not perform any frequency validation when they read a text file. They don't check to see that a frequency is within any of the PRO-93's valid ranges, nor do they verify that the frequency is appropriate for the PRO-93's step sizes. If you decide to enter "funny" frequencies, you do so at your own risk!

Text File (.TXT) Format

The programs will read and write plain text files that you can edit in any text editor (Windows Notepad, Word, vi, etc.). If you use a Unix-ish editor, note that the text files created by the programs contain CR/LF pairs - not just LF. On input, the programs do not care about that, but the difference might affect how you configure your editor. If you use an editor like Word, Wordpad, or Write, make sure you save the file as plain text - don't save it as a "Word Document".

The text file contains two things: descriptive text and data fields. Data fields are delimited by square brackets [ and ]. Nothing outside the square brackets (the descriptive text) is important to the programs - all they care about is what's in the data fields. All of the data fields are important - if you delete just one, the programs will either give you garbage or will refuse to load the text file. Also important is the order of the data fields. Don't go swapping the rows that are labeled "ID Delay Time" and "Fleet Map". Since the descriptive text isn't important to the programs, the only way they have of knowing what a particular data field represents is that data field's position in the file.

Since the data fields are delimited by square brackets, some special considerations are necessary if you actually want to use square brackets in a field (i.e. an alpha tag). For example, if you make the Bank 0 Alpha Tag field look like "[NYC [PD] ]", it will interpreted as "NYC [PD". The programs look for the closing square bracket ] in order to end a field. If you want to put square bracket characters in your tags, you must precede them with the backslash character \. For example, the tag above becomes "[NYC \[PD\] ]". The backslash character tells the programs "interpret the very next character literally". If you want to put a backslash character in a tag, use a double backslash: "[NYC \[PD\\FD\] ]" would give you a tag of "NYC [PD\FD]". If you start using backslashes in your data fields, make sure you don't put them in front of the delimiting [ and ]. This will cause the programs to "miss" data fields, and they'll fail to load the file correctly.

The length of the data fields is not important. [ 858.40000 ] and [858.4] are equivalent. Alpha tags are either truncated on the right (if the field is longer than 12 characters) or padded on the right with blanks (if the field is shorter than 12 characters).

The data fields (along with their descriptive text, if any) are described next. Everything is described in the order in which it appears in the text file.

File header - This is merely descriptive text that shows the date and time at which the programs wrote the file.
Version Stamp - Takes the form Text File Format Version [1] DO NOT ALTER THIS!!!. Defines the format of the file. The programs use this information when reading the file to determine what data fields should be present. Don't change it, or the programs likely won't be able to read the file.

Next follows information for each bank. It starts with the bank number and it's alpha tag, and continues through the end of the trunk IDs for that bank. There are 10 consecutive blocks of such information.

Bank Alpha Tag - Takes the form Bank 0 - [ARL/FRS ]. Shows the bank number and the current alpha tag.
Active/Inactive, Open/Closed - Takes the form [ ACTIVE] [CLOSED]. Defines whether the bank is scanned (ACTIVE or INACTIVE) and whether it is open or closed (OPEN or CLOSED).
Channel Info - Takes the form Ch000 [ARLINGTON ] [ 858.43750] [MOT ] [X] [ ] [ ]. Contains the Alpha Tag, Frequency, Receive Mode, and the Delay, Lockout, and Attenuation settings (respectively) for each channel. Receive Mode is one of AM, FM, MOT, or EDACS. The Delay, Lockout, and Attenuation settings are set (turned ON) by placing any non-blank character in the data field. The programs use a capital X to show that a setting is ON, but you may use any character you like.
Trunking Mode - Takes the form Trunking Mode [Motorola ]. Sets the Trunking Mode for the bank. May be one of Not Trunked, Motorola, or EDACS.
Display Mode - Takes the form EDACS Display Mode [Normal]. Sets the display mode for EDACS trunk IDs. May be either Normal or AFS.
Motorola 400MHz Base - Takes the form Motorola 400MHz Base Freq [ 406.00000] MHz. Sets the base frequency, in MHz, of the Motorola UHF-Lo range.
Motorola 400MHz Offset - Takes the form Motorola 400MHz Offset [ 380]. Sets the offset of the Motorola UHF-Lo range.
Motorola 400MHz Step Size - Takes the form Motorola 400MHz Step Size [25.0] kHz. Sets the step size of the Motorola UHF-Lo range.
Motorola 800MHz Base - Takes the form Motorola 800MHz Base [Normal] kHz. Sets the base frequency for Motorola 800 MHz systems. Can be either Normal (851.0125 MHz) or Offset (851.0000 MHz).
Trunk ID Delay - Takes the form ID Delay Time [ 1500] milliseconds. Sets the time, in milliseconds, for which the scanner will watch the control channel after the signal disappears from the voice channel.
Fleet Map - Specifies the size codes for each of the eight entries in the bank's fleet map. Each entry can be S00 through S12. Type-II systems use all S00.
Subbank Lockout - Takes the form Sub-Bank 0 [NOT LOCKED OUT]. Specifies whether each trunk ID subbank is locked out or not. Can be either NOT LOCKED OUT or LOCKED OUT.
Trunk ID Entries - Takes the form ID0-00 [ADAM ] [ 33232] [ ]. Specifes the Alpha Tag, Trunk ID, and Lockout flag for each Trunk ID entry. The lockout flag follows the same convention as the channel flags described above. The Trunk ID value must be entered in the format appropriate for the Trunking Mode and Display Mode entries (above) for the bank. For example, if the bank is set to EDACS mode and AFS display, you must enter the Trunk IDs in AFS format.

After all bank information (channels and trunking info) come the CB and Marine search range (SR0 and SR1) settings. Since the format is the same for both, only a Marine example is described here.

CB/Marine Channel - Takes the form 01 156.0500 [X] [ ] [ ]. Sets the Delay, Lockout, and Attenuation flags for the channel. Flags are set in the same way as the channel flags described above.

Next come the SR2 (Police and Fire) search range settings.

General Settings - Two flags that set FM and Delay for SR2 (unknown what happens if you turn off the FM flag).
Active Subgroups - Four flags that allow you to turn each SR2 subgroup on and off.
Subgroup Attenuation - Four flags that allow you to turn on and off the attenuation on each SR2 subgroup.
Lockouts - Allows you to specify up to 50 frequencies that are locked out of searches in the range. You can enter frequencies in any or all of the 50 fields.

Next come the SR3 (Aircraft) search range settings.

Attenuation and Delay - Two flags that set Attenuation and Delay for SR3.
Lockouts - Allows you to specify up to 50 frequencies that are locked out of searches in the range. You can enter frequencies in any or all of the 50 fields.

Next come the SR4 (Ham) search range settings.

General Settings - Two flags that set FM and Delay for SR4 (unknown what happens if you turn off the FM flag).
Active Subgroups - Six flags that allow you to turn each SR4 subgroup on and off.
Subgroup Attenuation - Six flags that allow you to turn on and off the attenuation on each SR4 subgroup.
Lockouts - Allows you to specify up to 50 frequencies that are locked out of searches in the range. You can enter frequencies in any or all of the 50 fields.

Next come the SR5 (User-specified limits) search range settings.

Alpha Tag, Range Limts - Takes the form [Limit Search] [ 850.00000] MHz [ 868.98750] MHz. Sets the Alpha Tag, the Low Frequency, and the High Frequency (respectively) for SR5.
Settings - Four flags that allow you to turn Attenuation and Delay on or off, and set the receive mode to Default, AM, or FM. To set Default, make sure the "AM/FM Mode" flag is not set. To set AM or FM, set the "AM/FM Mode" flag and then either set the FM flag (FM) or clear it (AM).
Lockouts - Allows you to specify up to 50 frequencies that are locked out of searches in the range. You can enter frequencies in any or all of the 50 fields.

After all of the search ranges are other global settings.

Priority Channel Tag and Frequency - takes the form [ ] [ 866.36250] MHz. Sets the alpha tag and the frequency for the priority channel.
Priority Flags - Sets the Attenuation, Delay, and FM Mode flags for the Priority Channel.
Weather Channel Priority - The next two lines set the priority function to Weather. The first is a flag that turns weather priority ON, the second is the weather channel (1 - 7) to use for the priority function. Note that if you use weather priority, then the next time you download from the scanner, the priority frequency above will have been altered to reflect the selected weather channel's frequency.
Weather Channel Attenuation - Seven flags that allow you to turn attenuation on or off for each weather channel.
Tune Mode Settings - Four flags that specify "Tune Mode" settings. These flags are specified in the same way as the SR5 Settings above.
Attenuation Mode - Sets the attenuation mode to either GLOBAL or NORMAL.
Global Attenuation - A flag that sets global attenuation on or off, if the attenuation mode above is set to GLOBAL.
Priority - A flag that turns the Priority function on or off.
Scan Direction - This flag controls the radio's scan direction, either UP (flag not set) or DOWN (flag set).
Key Tone - This flag controls whether the key tone is ON (flag set) or OFF (flag not set).
Backlight Time - Specifies the amount of time, in 10-millisecond increments, that the backlight stays on, from 0 to 65535. Zero really tells the radio "65536" (655.36 seconds).
Display Contrast - Sets the contrast from -3 (lightest) to 3 (darkest).