Dear Mathias, Thank you for this very quick analysis; it seems to be the perfect explanation!
Good luck with the next steps! 73, Emiel

After using Chirp to delete the records made in Chirp (keeping the ones made in clone utility); the clone utility makes a perfect all channel read on the remaining records.
But using Chirp to delete the chirp records and shifting the clone utility records up in position does not work; probably the hidden fields are not shifted upwards as well.

Of course this confirms your idea!

Thanks for looking at this once more. I think I have a preliminary patch that addresses the problem you reported. I'd like to clarify two things if I may, though:

1. When you say "and shifting the clone utility records up in position", how are you performing the shifting operation? I can think of several ways to do it: (a) Use the "Delete... and shift block up" feature, (b) Use the "Delete... and shift all memory up" feature, (c) Just delete and then use the "move up" feature, (d) Just delete, then cut & paste. I'd like to check what happens exactly with and without the patch when doing what you did since it would make sense to have it covered by the patch, too.

2. This is a bit weird: When I program your image to my radio, the first bank (created with Alinco software) looks good on the radio but the only channel displayed in the second bank is 2-62 Sky Radio. The 10 other channels above 62 can not be selected. It's as if the memory position was empty but the radio does not allow storing something there. Very strange, and even more strange is that I could swear that I could select those 10 channels the first time I had flashed your image. Unfortunately I only noticed this after a bit of testing of the patch so I can't assess if this was somehow broken by the patch or if the origin of the fault is somewhere else. Hence I'd like to ask if you could check if all 11 channels of bank 2 are available in your HT in the main band (= top line). Curiously they are displayed fine in the sub band. If they are not available then it will appear as if the radio was kinda stuck on channel 62 because that's the only one of the bank that can be accessed.

If this is the case in your radio too, don't panic. I have a fix for this condition as well. At first I thought the issue was permanent because I couldn't cure it even with the Alinco software or by resetting the radio but it turns out that it can be fixed easily.

Regards and thanks, Matt

In the set mode tab of the clone utility I had set "bank no (Main)" to 0 and bank no (Sub) to 1.
The alnico did just that; showing bank 0 channels in main en bank 1 channels in sub.
I changed (Sub) to bank0; and after that sub showed (only) the bank 0 channels.
No Linux here... just Windows 10 (64 bit). Have fun!

sorry it was the "common set" tab of the clone utility

and yes main only displays sky radio after it was set to bank 1 !!

maybe because that was the only channel I ever entered by hand into the alnico?

The sky radio channel seems not to receive in main
Pressing 2x "main" key now sets main to bank 0

OK I think I figured it out. The "bank" issue is actually almost unrelated to this. Here's what's going on: The channels are represented in the image in a particular way. Every channel memory segment starts with a byte that indicates if the channel is empty (0x00) or not. For "not empty", I set this to 0x02 because at the time I did the coding, I observed what the Alinco software was doing and it appeared to just write 0x02 in there. In the bank that doesn't display any channel in the main band except for Sky, the "hidden" channels have 0x01. The reason for this is very simple: They are outside of the frequency range that is covered by the main band. Only the sub band has wide range coverage and AM / WFM demod I think. The Alinco software uses 0x01 on such channels to tell the radio that those only work in the sub band. As a consequence they are hidden in the main band.

I'm sorry I didn't catch this faster, it makes total sense given the receive architecture of the radio. I only use mine inside the ham bands so I had never tried WFM and/or out of band stuff. I'll update the patch to set 0x01 instead of 0x02 just like the Alinco software in these cases. This doesn't kill any feature because listening to Sky on the main band when chirp sets 0x02 simply doesn't work, the squelch opens but there is no audio. The radio hardware lacks the capability to do this in the main band.

Once this is done I'll submit the patch, it will end up in the official code base and you will be able to grab a nightly build for Windows. This will cure your image. In this context, I noticed that the last three channels in your 0-bank (AID 2013 and the two last Terlet ones) are subject to what is outlined above -- they are out of band and/or WFM. IF this all works like I imagine, you will find that you can program those with chirp for the main band but not with the Alinco software, yet they won't work in the main band even when "cheating" with the current chirp version.

Thanks that is a real good job!

On 2m and 70cm the extended range of the main band is 136-169.995 and 420-469.995.
This requires the blue wire mod (that I havent used) but maybe it is an idea to use those limits (+23cm range) to select between 0x01 and 0x02? That also covers the T model ranges.

Thanks again!

It might even be: 136 MHz - 173.995 MHz and 400MHz - 469.995 MHz see:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/AlincoDJ-G7/conversations/messages/260

Some web search:
1 extended range mod seems is used frequently
2 one more reference starting 70cm already on 400 MHz http://www.worldwidedx.com/threads/alinco-dj-g7-mod.35508/
Best range for 0x02 seems to be: 136-173.995 or 400-469.995 or 1240.000-1299.995 MHz

E. van Puffelen wrote:

Some web search:
1 extended range mod is used frequently
2 one more reference starting 70cm already on 400 MHz http://www.worldwidedx.com/threads/alinco-dj-g7-mod.35508/
Best range for 0x02 seems to be: 136-173.995 or 400-469.995 or 1240.000-1299.995 MHz

1 With Chirp copy and pasting channel information in a new file is easy; an advice for anybody having trouble with an old image? "Old" image files will not be around much when the improved version is used some time.

2 Looks good!

Thanks, I had a look at the code and it looks very good!!! Somehow I am no longer able to download the patches as a recognisable .py file... so I couldn't test (with present chirp). But I am very confident you did it 100% perfect!
So please include... and I will check after that.
Thanks for this good job Mathias!

Emiel, the patch should now be part of the chirp LATEST, in case you still feel like testing this.

Regards, Matt

Math, just tested Chirp 20180412 and it works perfect!

It took a little up and down sending between chirp and the clone utility through the Alinco, to get rid of the wrong coding in the old 2017 channel file.

Now it is perfect: main shows frequencies between the limits of the post above and sub shows all including (far) out of band and AM.

The combination of Chirp and the Clone utility works fine. Clone utility for bank and other settings and chirp for easy channel editing and copying. You can have both programs running; just do read/write commands using one program at a time.

Thanks for this really excellent job!

73, Emiel