Astro Spectra VOCON dealy

[Josh]

So....

I made an astro Spectra for the car... frankenflashed it up for W9 operation... I reused the PA, preselector, VCO, drawer unit cable interface and Systems9000 (spectra) remote head control cable. The astro unit replaced an analog unit that had been installed and used for over a year with no problems at all.

Not one day after installing the radio, which had a NOS VOCON with DSP8 AND r11.10.00 firmware (pretty recent), I start getting 'FAIL 01/90' messages... I thought it was the control head having issues or a broken ignition wire as the last time I had this sort of problem it was the result of the drawer unit not having power..

I unplugged the plugged the radio back in a couple of time, and the message went away, the radio worked fine. and continued to work fine until the next time I shut it off.

FAIL 01/90 again... now, I'm thinking that the problem is with the power cable for sure and I mess around with it some more and things are fine for the rest of the day.

Today, I get in the car after work--- the radio worked fine on the commute to work... same fail code... I didn't do anything. it corrected itself.

Now it's totally dead.... all I get is FAIL 01/90 even when I put the VOCON in the radio I have in the house... I'm pretty upset.

What gives here? It's like the VOCON isn't even there... I've had the thing in the car since last Wednesday evening and it's dead now some 5 days later.

Is the Astro Spectra especially volatile to being in a car -or- is the VOCON just bad... even though it was "new old stock"?

I blew in the record into a different VOCON and put it in the car, and it's working just as it should.... time will tell I guess, to see if it gets fried too.

-Josh

[kcbooboo]

Sometimes NOS, which we all understand to mean New Old Stock, doesn't necessarily mean that it was ever working or will continue to work. I had that situation with a Bird wattmeter element. Bad from the factory.

If your VOCON is more than 10 years old, and if there are any electrolytic capacitors on it, perhaps one is going bad. Similarly, the caps in the radios themselves will make the radio do strange unexplained things.

However, I will say that a FL 01/90 can be quite frustrating in any radio.

Bob M.

[Josh]

So...

I let the radio sit overnight... I didn't touch a thing, however b/c my power supply was "off" all night, there was no voltage to the radio at all- unlike in the car where 12v is constantly supplied from the battery.

I turned the supply on and then the radio and it works again... I'm totally confused.

I tossed my dash-mount digital spectra S-Record into it and it has been smooth sailing since. I don't think it will last however.

WTF is up with this "magically healing" VOCON board and mysterious fail codes that go away without human intervention?

Also, there are no elecrolytic caps on the VOCON board, surface-mount ceramic ones definitly... as well as a lot of of flash chips and other stuff like that.

------------------------------------

Here's another interesting thing...

My 1996 VOCONs, from old radios- one has current firmware, when the radio powers up the speaker makes a nice "pop"... this other, newer vocon (NOS) doesn't do this at all.... and has the same firmware ... this is another really odd occurence... No, I don't mind this 'pop', it's actually difficult for me to go without hearing it actually (j/k)... I didn't know the VOCON had at least some control over audio popping noises, even though after powerup operation is otherwise no different.

-Josh

[kcbooboo]

I think ALL audio goes through the VOCON board, even when encryption is not in use. Whether the popping is due to something powering on too fast or too slow (which would imply a capacitor of some kind) is unknown. I have a service manual for one but never looked into it except for the RXFE module.

Bob M.