Quantar keeps cycling through powerup and resets

[902]

Hi all,

I have a VHF stand-alone Quantar which was up at a remote location. It was reported down and, when we finally got to the site, sure enough, it was down.

When I opened the cabinet, I found the repeater stuck cycling through power up, then it resets and does it all over again. It's stuck in a loop. Can't read it, or anything.

Has anyone experienced this before? I'm about to ship it off, but I'd love to not have to do that. I'd appreciate your thoughts.

Apologies if I've overlooked something that's been posted already. I did some searches through the archives and couldn't see anything on this.

[N4DES]

Do you have any FRU's? If so I would try the Station Control Board before shipping the whole 70 lb. station off.

[Bill_G]

That's my experience - station control board failure.

[RFguy]

How old is the firmware?

I had this problem years ago (constant cycling) and was a firmware issue where the unused section of the codeplug was corupted.

If I remember, I was able to recover by reloading an archived codeplug and run the "condition codeplug" option.

[902]

I don't have any FRUs for this. Just the station itself. In a previous life, I might have had one or two units on the shelf or as a hot stand-by that I could have tried some swaps with, but not anymore.

I did see the thread on conditioning the codeplug, as well as the service bulletin. I tried reading the station, but the constant resetting won't allow the read. The RSS shows that it can't make communication. Per the serial number this is a 2006 station and seems to have been "set and forget" once it was installed. Would have been nice if I could try the conditioning.

I'll have to ask around locally (northeast Florida) and see if anyone has a spare SCB. There aren't any Motorola P25 systems here; this immediate area is predominately Harris, so, absent an overt physical failure I can fix, miracle, or spontaneous resolution, I'll most likely be shipping this off to the depot.

Will keep you all posted on what I find out.

THANK YOU!!!

[d119]

Pull SCM out of station (NOTHING on the Quantar is hot-swappable, so make sure you power off).

Pull all chips off of SCM, remembering where they came from.

Compressed-air clean the SCM. Reinstall all chips/SIMM's (if it has SIMM's).

Pencil eraser the contacts on the card-edge connector.

Reinstall & power up.

Report back with results.

[kcbooboo]

Also try disconnecting any external interface equipment. Something might be activating a control signal that the station doesn't want to see while booting and self-testing. The MTR2000 is stupidly sensitive this way and it will get stuck in the same loop if something as benign as the MRTI Monitor line is grounded.

Bob M.