Minitor III Glitch?

MikeL123 · Post by **MikeL123** » Mon May 24, 2004 2:49 pm

I'm on my second minitor III because you guys all know how durable these things are... lol...jk. Anyway on my first minitor III i had it programmed to my fire dept specs and one day the thing didn't go off to my tones, but it did recieve transmissions when i put it on "monitor". I got rid of it and replaced it b/c i didn't want to be bothered with repairs. THis happened again to my second minitor III. Is this a common thing? Do these pagers just lose their programmed tones after a while? Its not my dispatch system cause I have a minitor II that goes off fine. Please help

Mike

nmfire10 · Post by **nmfire10** » Mon May 24, 2004 4:24 pm

Yes. Thats why I have reverted to refurbishing our minitor II's

n9upc · Post by **n9upc** » Mon May 24, 2004 6:00 pm

What type of tone system are you using aka Motorola, GE, User, etc...

We found that with our Motorola tone of 1092.4 Hz you need to use the Motorola tone table. Someone programmed it with a user tone set-up and the tone was then 1090.6 Hz and for some reason just having it off by 1.8 Hz we did not get the pager to alert when your tones were set off and they were away from the tower a bit.

If they were in town the thing would go off but get about a mile or two away and no go. Racked our brains for weeks until we looked at the tones that were in there. Of course our local dumass /\/\ shop said that it was the system not the pagers (but they wanted to get this contract) so I think that is why what was said was said.

Just a thought as to the problems.

Also NM in another post you said how to get a two-tone alert to go off as a steady alert and not interupt by changing it to group. Tell me where in the RSS that is please cause I can not seem to find it???? I run with two ambulances and it would be nice to seperate the first responder tones for intermit and the ambulance tones as long alert.

Tony Soprano · Post by **Tony Soprano** » Tue May 25, 2004 4:16 am

It is not possible for a pager or radio to "lose its tones". Well,
nothing is impossible, but highly unlikely.

His pager quit alerting because of solder defects on the logic
board. The Minitor II eventually suffers the same fate, although
not as frequently.

RADIOMAN2002 · Post by **RADIOMAN2002** » Tue May 25, 2004 5:41 am

I still can't understand why anyone would want a pager that has been plagued with problems since the first day off the line. Throw away the Motorola MinitorsIII and IV and soon the V,(you think they were building a car for all the changes every year) and go to a Vertex or similar portable, first you get a better product that works a lot more reliably and second you get a 2-way radio for half the price of the pager. Most departments in our county are going away from pagers to 2-way radios. A special channel has been set up for just about anyone to call in an event to the 911 center.

x1sspic · Post by **x1sspic** » Wed May 26, 2004 7:53 am

n9upc wrote:
We found that with our Motorola tone of 1092.4 Hz you need to use the Motorola tone table. Someone programmed it with a user tone set-up and the tone was then 1090.6 Hz and for some reason just having it off by 1.8 Hz we did not get the pager to alert when your tones were set off and they were away from the tower a bit.

Thankfully I still have my minitor II, with great receive sensitivity. The older tone filters were much more forgiving as far as having a weak signal (eg cutting in and out) or tone deviation and still tripping. The new minitors and radios that are software controlled are very unforgiving.

kf4sqb · Post by **kf4sqb** » Wed May 26, 2004 9:38 am

I had an even bigger problem with my old Minitor III. a problem aside from the fact that the receiver is a real piece of s#!t. Mine suddenly lost, for no apparent reason, it's codeplug. I say "lost", but it really chaged. One day, it was a properly (which is a relative term when used with the Minitor III

) operating high-band pager. The next day, it was a disfunctional (more so than normal, that is) low-band pager! The local shop, at first, accused me of changing the guts of the pager for low-band guts. After they were convinced that I didn't do it, they had to send it to the /\/\ Depot, who scrapped it. I never thought I'd say it, but I acctually miss my old III, as I now carry an even bigger POS, the Minitor IV.

MikeL123 · Post by **MikeL123** » Wed May 26, 2004 11:21 am

His pager quit alerting because of solder defects on the logic
board. - Is this fixable without sending it out to the depot and paying the flat rate of $78. Also we are using motorola tones.

rrfd43 · Post by **rrfd43** » Wed May 26, 2004 11:32 am

I had a similar problem with the III's. I wound up using the manual tone set up, not the "motorola" tone sequence. It seemed to solve the problem, all pagers now work like they should. We have a number of them with up to 4 sets of tones and they work 100%. Pager Geek jump in here any time!

Tony Soprano · Post by **Tony Soprano** » Wed May 26, 2004 11:56 am

MikeL123 wrote:His pager quit alerting because of solder defects on the logic
board. - Is this fixable without sending it out to the depot and paying the flat rate of $78. Also we are using motorola tones.

It's an easy fix, if you have a local Motorola shop with bench techs, they should be able to fix it there. It's a gravy repair.

Dispatcher85 · Post by **Dispatcher85** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 7:46 pm

This is the same thing that is happening to mine. Read the thread "Minitor III problem" After squeezing the pager it works fine. I am just afraid to do it myself.

DJP126 · Post by **DJP126** » Fri Jun 04, 2004 3:40 am

Solder defects? Depends on definition I guess. I worked at Motorola's pager depot for a short time & this is what I THINK you are seeing with the Minitor III's & IV's.

First of all, the components are all surface mount devices. Second, the circuit boards are fairly thin & flex easily. Third, the belt clip CAUSES the boards to flex right near the processor & code plug.

Put these three things together & you have a problem just waiting to fail.

Like I said, this is what I THINK the problems are. Unfortunately, I wasn't there long enough to be able to do any kind of research to prove it.

Tony Soprano · Post by **Tony Soprano** » Fri Jun 04, 2004 4:35 am

DJP126 wrote:Solder defects? Depends on definition I guess. I worked at Motorola's pager depot for a short time & this is what I THINK you are seeing with the Minitor III's & IV's.

First of all, the components are all surface mount devices. Second, the circuit boards are fairly thin & flex easily. Third, the belt clip CAUSES the boards to flex right near the processor & code plug.

Put these three things together & you have a problem just waiting to fail.

Like I said, this is what I THINK the problems are. Unfortunately, I wasn't there long enough to be able to do any kind of research to prove it.

Well, the solders fail at the decoder chip, that is the final mode of failure, but it is really an engineering defect that sticks that big decoder chip right under the belt clip. The Minitor II was prone to the same failure, although less frequently due to the chip being placed on the inside of the board rather than the outside. That and a better housing and fit. Unfortunately, the Minitor 3 fix only lasts so long, until the board flexing takes its toll again. The IV, while a little better, uses the same decoder design, and thus is also prone to this failure.

Minitor III Glitch?

Minitor III Glitch?

MInitor III Glitch