One for All EXTENDER A1 FOR URC-7780 Instructions Manual page 28

Key Moves, Timed and Key Macros
These three setup features are best considered together since in the unextended remote they occupy the
same region of EEPROM memory, namely F0AD–F3FE in the URC-7781 and ECAD–EFFE in the URC-
7780. The installation process for the extender copies the content of this area to its new location
described above in the discussion of learning, making all necessary changes to internal address tables etc.
In doing so it does not distinguish between these features, although they differ from one another in their
relationship both to the extender and to the current version of IR.exe (version 7.15).
Key Moves are fully supported by IR.exe and the extender. They are carried over automatically by the
installation process. No preparation is necessary.
Timed Macros are not supported by the extender and their format in the unextended remote is
incompatible with IR.exe. If they are present in a setup for the unextended remote that is downloaded to
IR.exe then they are interpreted as key macros, possibly as corrupt ones. They will show up under the
Macro tab as assigned to some inappropriate key and they may have been "corrected", which of course in
reality means they have been corrupted. The same happens if they are still present when a setup is
upgraded with the extender. It is therefore necessary to delete any Timed Macros before undertaking the
upgrade.
Key Macros are supported by the extender but their format in the unextended remote is incompatible with
IR.exe. If they are present in a setup for the unextended remote that is downloaded to IR.exe then they
either do not show up under any tab or else they are interpreted as Key Moves with some inappropriate
destination. Which of these happens depends on the content of the macro. In either case this content may
become corrupted. The extender uses the Key Macro format of IR.exe, as otherwise it would not be
possible to use IR.exe to create macros, and since the ability to create macros of great power is virtually
the raison d'être of extenders, this would be totally unacceptable. Because of the possibility of corruption
it is not wise to try to convert macros from one format to the other. Key Macros, too, therefore need to be
deleted. They may be re-created after the upgrade but with the greater power of macros in the extender it
is likely you will instead want to create new ones.
So how do you delete your macros? Timed Macros are easy. When you have timed macros, an asterisk
precedes the time shown in the normal LCD display. The menu item Advanced Setup/Macro/Delete
Macro/Delete Timed Macro presents you with a scrollable list of timed macros so that you can delete
them one by one. You can also delete them with IR.exe as they are the only things that appear under the
Macros tab. Just delete everything under this tab, one by one.
Key Macros are easy to delete if you know what keys have assigned macros. You can use the menu item
Advanced Setup/Macro/Delete Macro/Delete Key Macro. But this does not show you what macros are
set up, neither does IR.exe as many macros do not show up there under any tab. You can use Delete Key
Macro to delete from every key in turn, but it is better if you are prepared to examine the relevant
memory area as displayed under the Raw Data tab of IR.exe. If you do this, you can assure yourself that
nothing has got through the net that can potentially cause trouble later on.
To do this, or to understand the issues in more detail, you need to know the basic format of these features.
They share a common format, namely a 3-byte header followed by a body of variable length. Indeed,
learned signals also share this format although they occupy a different region of the EEPROM. Byte 3 of
the header is the number of bytes in the body, as a hexadecimal value. The first byte of the first header is
at F0AD or ECAD, its length byte enables the first byte of the next header to be located and the chain of
headers is terminated by a first byte of value FF. Armed with this information, you can look at each
header in turn. There may be more data after the terminating FF but if so, it is left-over garbage that you
will delete, easily, later on.
The various setup features are distinguished from one another by bits 4–7 of header byte 2. In the
operating system of the remote the identifying values are:
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