My VX6 is the Asian version which my friend Bob was so kind to bring with him from Singapore. Apparently this version is slightly different from the US and European versions not only as it supports 6m but as it uses a larger number of VFO slots ("Bands") which does not appear to work smoothly with VX6 commander.

As a starting point I decided to write a small tool which allows me to reliably read, validate and write the memory content in order to facilitate backups. It is written in C and makes use only of POSIX functionality so it can be compiled under any Linux or BSD system (as well as under Windows of course).

The tool itself creates the same .vx6 file format that VX6 commander creates so the generated files are interchangeable.

When executed from the command line without parameters, the program reveals it's options:

Macintosh:Debug au$ ./vx6


VX6tool version 1.0
(c) Jan Lategahn DO5LJ 2009

command line help

vx6 <options> <commands>

<options>:
-p <port>      path to serial port (eg. /dev/tty.usbserial)
-f <file>      path to file (to store or read HT data)
-s             skip file checking (checksums etc.)

<commands>:
f2r            move data from file to radio
r2f            move data from radio to file

Example:

vx6 -p /dev/myserialport -f k1nop.vx6 r2f

reads the content of the radio memory into a file k1nop.vx6. The program will supply instructions on how to proceed and which buttons to press on the radio..