Year of manufacture - does Motorola now use a "o"?

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g8tzl2004
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Year of manufacture - does Motorola now use a "o"?

Post by g8tzl2004 »

The serial number on one of my Motorola radios is xxxTOBxxx.

The Batlabs guide to working out the year of manufacture excludes the letter "O" ie MN..PQR.

Does Motorola now use the letter "O"??

Its definitely a "O" and not a "Q" as the model number has a "Q" in it and you can clearly see the difference between the letters.

Thanks
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jackhackett
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Re: Year of manufacture - does Motorola now use a "o"?

Post by jackhackett »

I would say that's a Q. If they did use O it would have been several years ago and I never saw any.
They skip I and O so they're not confused with one and zero, but Q isn't much better.. often that tail on it is hard to see.
The best way to verify it is by reading the radio programming.
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escomm
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Re: Year of manufacture - does Motorola now use a "o"?

Post by escomm »

They don't use O.

But they are using I now.

For the Reynosa "factory" code

That's in Mexico by the way
g8tzl2004
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Re: Year of manufacture - does Motorola now use a "o"?

Post by g8tzl2004 »

I've now uploaded my DMR radio details using the CPS and the serial number is definitely a "O" and not a "Q" !!!

The firmware is version R02.05.00 which is dated around September 2012 - so it old firmware.

According to the Batlabs manufacturing date schedule: N=2012, P=2013 and Q=2014

My radio serial number implies that O=2012 based on the firmware date.

If the firmware had been dated 2014, then I would have agreed that the serial is a "Q" but its dated 2012!!!

As the XPR5555 was introduced in 2012, the letter dating is still correct for radios made in 2013 (P) and 2014 (Q)..maybe Motorola just decided to use "0" rather than "N" for 2012 as they knew that in a few months the traditional date order would be restored???
KG4INW
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Re: Year of manufacture - does Motorola now use a "o"?

Post by KG4INW »

It wouldn't be the first time I've seen a typo on a radio label.
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jackhackett
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Re: Year of manufacture - does Motorola now use a "o"?

Post by jackhackett »

Well if the CPS is reading it as an O it's not a label typo. Not sure what happened there...

On the plus side, it won't come up again until what.. 2036?
KG4INW
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What radios do you own?: Not enough apparently!

Re: Year of manufacture - does Motorola now use a "o"?

Post by KG4INW »

True. Perhaps the SN was generated from the same source and that carried through to both the label and electronically? I've touched hundreds of brand-new radios in the past 3 years and never saw any that had an 'O' in the serial number. It's definitely strange!
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