Batboard

I just did this by accident here, is this "normal'? I apparently accidentally stepped on the monitor and transmit foot pedal at the same time. It locked the main reciever and transmitter into this horrible loop. The audio was just garbled humming and static and it wouldn't stop. The only way I could make it stop was to manually fail the main reciever, than manually vote it back after re-enabling it.

Is this a normal phenomenon??

I had a Centracom II do the same thing. One footpedal was for xmit, the other monitor. One day my big foot hit both in such away, that the control would open up the repeater, however would not xmit voice unless the pedal was pressed down.

Hmm.. never encountered that on our system. Actually, both pedals are set up for PTT here. Good thing, because people keep moving the stupid things around all the time (we don't have them bolted down) and unless I crawl under the desk and locate them, I usually end up tromping them both, or just the side of one, or something.

What does Monitor do? Defeat PL? If so I guess that's why we don't have it enabled - all our conventional channels are used only by one service each, so anything without PL on there (bleedover by truckers passing by repeater sites, etc) we don't want to hear anyway.

Here's another question. We get a significant "pop" sound, not showing up on any specific resource, at 00:02:02 and 00:05:02 every morning (ie. midnight). It comes through unselected and selected at the same time. Does this happen to anyone else? Apparently it's not serious enough for our techs to trace it, but I'm curious about this sort of thing myself.

--j.

Jay911 wrote:
Here's another question. We get a significant "pop" sound, not showing up on any specific resource, at 00:02:02 and 00:05:02 every morning (ie. midnight). It comes through unselected and selected at the same time. Does this happen to anyone else? Apparently it's not serious enough for our techs to trace it, but I'm curious about this sort of thing myself.

--j.

What comes to mind is either your System Timer cards (or your Aimi cards in a SmartZone config). All systems have at least two of these cards (for redundancy, 'cause if they don't work, your whole system doesn't work), and most are set for 'midnight rollover'. There is normally no sound when the switch is made. The fact you hear something tells me you may have a problem with one of the cards. The system may be switching back to the 'good' card 3 minutes later if something isn't quite right. If your CEB is local to you, it's easy enough to check. Take a look at the CEB as midnight rolls around. The 'active' System Timer card will have a green LED, the 'standby' card will have an amber LED. See if they switch at the time noted above. If so, see if they switch back 3 minutes later. If it's AIMI cards, the active will have two green lights. If this is indeed the case, it's a serious issue that should be dealt with asap, before the second card fails.


Todd

also check to make sure your timer cards are seated properly as well, if they are not the sound is usually caused by a small arc in connector on the backplane of the CEB ( Central Electronics Bank) during switchover. As far as the first question goes, I have seen the problem with the monitor pedal and the Xmit pedal accidently being pushed together. This mostly happens with tone remoted systems and CPU based consoles ( CC Elite and CC2+ CRT) This is more common in a CPU type console because a PC controls what the CEB does. As you might be aware, Centracom Elites do not officially use a OMI (Operator Module Interface) the use what is called a COIM. A COIM is a glorified OMI card that has a lot more crap on it so it can be used with a PC. However the CC2+ CRT used a 286 PC running DOS and that used a TOMI. TOMI cards were also used in the CC2+ as trunking cards. Anyways I am getting off subject here, when both pedals are used the command that is sent to the CEB thru commands from the PC gets locked and the CIE tells the card to do 2 things at the same time in which it really can't do so it tends to lock up the system. Sometimes you can clear the error by using the mouse as a PTT on the channel label (CCM for old timers) that is locked up and try to key it. If the error is really bad you have to pull the cards to release the lock, just as you would if you had a lock up on a network and had to pull a network cable. If you really want detail information I can see if I can pull some pages out of the manual and try to scan them but I think a basic laymans term will work.

Using the Instant PTT buttons did nothing. It was one reciever lit up with this noise. Once I manually failed that reciever a brought it back, it stopped. I was able to replicate it once. I tried to do it again to show a co-worker and it just gave me the usual "A-Hole Error Beep".