Batboard

Are the non-flashport MTS2000s the only ones that have 256k controllers? Also what's the distinction between units with orange rubber around the battery contacts as opposed to the units with black rubber there other than the obvious color difference?

Yes, the reason for the 512K controllers was to allow flashporting, so they are all capable of it. The earliest units came with the black rubber...probably the only reason for the change to orange was to tell at a glance whether it was an older unit or not.

Also, the units that came with the black rubbers, had 3 battery contacts, while the units that came with orange rubbers had 2 battery contacts. GARY N4KVE

I've also seen some with a blue insulator. Does that have any significance?
Tom

WB6DGN wrote:I've also seen some with a blue insulator. Does that have any significance?
Tom

We are discussing the color of the rubber surrounding the battery contacts. I have never seen blue. Could you be talking about the seal between the metal frame, & the plastic case? GARY N4KVE

Not always true about the black rubber insulator/three battery contacts. I've seen several MTS2000s with black rubber/3 contacts that were as late as 1998 and certainly had 512K controllers. I had one in my hands about a year ago, came from Knoxville, TN and had a firmware version of 6.01, all the boards matched, had late 1997 date codes including the RF board.

Only way you can tell is by the firmware versions, non Flashport radios will have something less tha 2.xx, all 512K boards have 5.xx or higher, you always look at the controller board itself and inspect the RAM chips themselves.

I think the BLUE ones are CENELEC radios.

Interestingly enough I recently acquired an 1993 build MTS2000 with the black rubber, three battery contacts, and ancient firmware (either R01.?? or S01.??) that had a 512k board in it. Perhaps it was field upgraded but then why have the ancient firmware in there still? Oh and another quick way to tell what size the controller is in an MTS2000 is to read the radio configuration in the FLASHport menu in the RSS/CPS.

I've seen a MTS2000 with depot labels that had black rubber battery contact rings that had firmware I think from either 1999 or 2000. The person who owns it said it came from CalFire and he's like 80% sure its a "depot special"

KE7JFF wrote:I've seen a MTS2000 with depot labels that had black rubber battery contact rings that had firmware I think from either 1999 or 2000. The person who owns it said it came from CalFire and he's like 80% sure its a "depot special"

So I guess that would mean that the depot probably upgraded the controller and left the black rubber there, not surprising as the battery contacts are part of the RF board.

Another interesting point on the radio I mentioned is it doesn't have depot tags as far as I can tell, just the factory black with white writing tags unless the depot was sending radios back with those type of tags at one point. Maybe the original controller went bad at one point and a replacement was ordered from Moto although I don't know if they'd ship a 512k controller out with ancient firmware. Then I suppose there is also the possibility that the firmware was downgraded although I'm not sure if that's even possible without special tools. Maybe the former user didn't have CPS, only RSS, and needed the lower firmware to support that.