TERA PRG-50 USB Programming Cable

It's hard to be super critical of a company just starting off, and is sharing their programming software for free. Really a 3-star experience, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt. Compared to the typical Chinese radios, the radio and software is certainly better. It feels like a higher-end design by the same designers there -- but I can't actually find any corporate info for TERA :)

In any case -- the 'gotcha' -- the programming software seems only to be able to use COM1-COM8. Although Windows already had the Prolific USB->RS232 drivers installed and recognized the cable, it was assigned a very high COM port #. Many of us have this experience -- any new cable/USB port combo triggers a new assignment.

Here, I needed to go into Windows device manager, and manually re-assign this device to a lower COM port (I chose COM8 knowing it wasn't actually being used).

Note also that when you hit the button to program the radio, you are presented with a window with a blank progress bar, and an OK and CANCEL button. The SW is waiting for you to hit OK to continue. Nothing special is needed on the radio side to bring up into the programming mode. I had the cable inserted at power-up.