The smart RIB (Part Number RLN1015) is the newest Radio Interface Box made by motorola in the mid 90's. It's called smart as it contains a buffer memory for flashing the ASTRO series of radios. In this case the firmware is flashed to the RIB and then the RIB MCU copies it to the radio. I'm not sure why this step was needed, other than perhaps the first computers in the mid 90's were unable to keep up the timing needed to flash a radio, it could also be a commercial reason for motorola.

You don't need a Smart RIB unless you want to do firmware updates to the ASTRO radios. Any old RIB will work. Even the Sandy Ganz RIB.

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The power supply for the rib is 9v Negative on the center pin. This is 100% opposite from every other supply for every other rib. This is fucking stupid and designed to fuck Motorola's partners by frying a serviceable SRIB if you use the wrong supply.

I have a custom supply I use and store it and the SRIB in the same box. As of 2021 SRIBs are very hard to come by, and command 200-300 dollars when they do come up. Save your SRIB!

Versions

There are several versions of the SRIB, you want the D or later (not sure if there are later). This is the amount of internal flash on the SRIB, and D is needed for flashing the 1 meg radios. Note you may need to open it and look at the flash chip internally to verify this.

There is a version which I have that has a battery pack option, in mine it doesn't appear to work.

Pictures

Manual

Smart RIB User's/Service Guide 6880309F20-A - Special Thanks to Pat Dengan for loaning this to me. Note the source document and schematic is rather poor and smudged from Motorola. If anything is unreadable, it was like that on the source, and if you have a better one, please contact me and I'll scan it.

Smart Rib Battery RLN-4488A Battery Pack Manual - special thanks to NPN for this.