Finally got around to doing the wideband mod to my 817, and found it a very easy task.
1, Power up the radio, hold the F key and note the cat rate setting, mine was 9600.
2, Plug the radio in using the cat lead, i also had to use my usb to serial convertor.
3, Run widebander v4, select the appropriate cat speed noted earlier
4, Select com port, the standard options are 1 to 6, however using device manager in windows lead me to see that my com port is 14. Oh oh what now…You can type over the number in the com port text field to suit yours.
5, Select which radio you have, 817, 857, 897 etc
6, Wait until a window tells you that its finished, happend to me almost instantly. Power down the radio and disconnect the cat lead. Job done.
All in all about 5 minutes work.
Note this only works with pre ND versions and you loose the ARS function.
I had my 857ND widebanded by Radioworld when I
bought it. You lose the ARS facility with that
radio too. However I was told that the way around
this is to set up split frequencies for the repeaters
in the memories. As I never use repeaters I’ve never
bothered, and to be totally honest, I’ve never found
out how to use the memories either!