SRM9000 radios and old age
Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 8:38 am
A lot of us use Simoco SRM9000 series vehicle and base radios and rightly so as they are amongst the best on the market in terms of performance and flexibility. However if, like the teams here in the north west, you got your radios anything up to seven years ago when we first switched to high band, they are now technically rather long in the tooth. In a couple of instances reported by Lakes teams and also encountered by myself, they have suffered failure of a non-specific function or operation. In one instance, this was a sudden failure of the auxiliary button on the fist microphone. It just stopped working. In my own case, a radio began to ignore the incoming CTCSS tone for that channel and refused to allow the audio to be heard.
Some of these issues, the microphone button for instance, can resemble mechanical failure and in this particular case the team radio officer went to great lengths to source and fit a new microphone. It had no effect and the fault continued. Everything else works fine, only the individual issue is noticed.
Both he and I eventually and largely out of desperation discovered the cure for the problem. In the belief that we'd somehow altered the configuration file, we read the radio into the programming software. In both cases, no problem was found in the config file but for no particular reason, we both blew the same, unaltered, config back into the radios. Miraculously the problems disappeared. My CTCSS began to work normally and the other officer found his microphone button had begun to function normally.
We can only assume that although there were no physical faults in any of the affected radios, the software configuration in them had become corrupted and effectively what we'd done was re-install the operating system as I often have to do on the various computers I use, some of which are nearly as old as me!
The moral of the story is that if a fairly small problem arises with your vehicle or base radios and possibly with portables although this hasn't so far been reported, your first port of call might be to read and re-program the existing config. I very much doubt that this approach will work if smoke has been seen escaping from the boxes but if it's just a small niggling issue then it's worth a try.
Series 8 radios are most affected as they are the oldest. Depending on exactly what causes this to happen, I wouldn't expect it in series 9 radios but certainly in the case of vehicle sets, they operate in a relatively hostile electrical environment and power supply spikes can kill any electrical device if they get into a sensitive bit, I always use a supply filtering choke when fitting radios in our own car for example. The sort of thing recommended for high end in-car audio systems. I suppose in a sense we could say we are lucky that the reported faults are sufficiently minor that re-installing the configuration files cures them so that does demonstrate a level of robustness in one sense. A power spike killed my internet modem some years ago but I didn't have the ability to try even reprogramming it so it went into the bin.
For the sake of a simple re-programming it's easy to determine if this is the problem. If after blowing the config back in, it still doesn't work then it's something else and a trip back to Huntingdon is in order.
Some of these issues, the microphone button for instance, can resemble mechanical failure and in this particular case the team radio officer went to great lengths to source and fit a new microphone. It had no effect and the fault continued. Everything else works fine, only the individual issue is noticed.
Both he and I eventually and largely out of desperation discovered the cure for the problem. In the belief that we'd somehow altered the configuration file, we read the radio into the programming software. In both cases, no problem was found in the config file but for no particular reason, we both blew the same, unaltered, config back into the radios. Miraculously the problems disappeared. My CTCSS began to work normally and the other officer found his microphone button had begun to function normally.
We can only assume that although there were no physical faults in any of the affected radios, the software configuration in them had become corrupted and effectively what we'd done was re-install the operating system as I often have to do on the various computers I use, some of which are nearly as old as me!
The moral of the story is that if a fairly small problem arises with your vehicle or base radios and possibly with portables although this hasn't so far been reported, your first port of call might be to read and re-program the existing config. I very much doubt that this approach will work if smoke has been seen escaping from the boxes but if it's just a small niggling issue then it's worth a try.
Series 8 radios are most affected as they are the oldest. Depending on exactly what causes this to happen, I wouldn't expect it in series 9 radios but certainly in the case of vehicle sets, they operate in a relatively hostile electrical environment and power supply spikes can kill any electrical device if they get into a sensitive bit, I always use a supply filtering choke when fitting radios in our own car for example. The sort of thing recommended for high end in-car audio systems. I suppose in a sense we could say we are lucky that the reported faults are sufficiently minor that re-installing the configuration files cures them so that does demonstrate a level of robustness in one sense. A power spike killed my internet modem some years ago but I didn't have the ability to try even reprogramming it so it went into the bin.
For the sake of a simple re-programming it's easy to determine if this is the problem. If after blowing the config back in, it still doesn't work then it's something else and a trip back to Huntingdon is in order.