Batboard

Folks
i know that there was an official channel at motorola to upgrade these consoles at one time (cc2 to cc2 gold elite). Supposedly it is only available to "trunking" customers, lets say for argument that my department (agrheeeem) has a trunking system.
Have any of you folks recently upgraded one of these consoles? My department is looking to do some improvements and our 1-position console is on the short list. I am trying to get an idea on cost, and just what is involved. Our salesperson came out and looked at the cards in the ceb and said somthing to the effect that they were revision a's and could not be upgraded. In upgrading to a gold elite wouoldnt mostly all of these cards need to be changed anyway? If anybody can shed some light into how they went through this upgrade process that would be appreciated. Also if there is any idea on cost that would be much appreciated.

The issue of the "A" & "B" cards relates to the BIM's. The Gold BIM firmware is too big to fit on the old cards. When upgrading "C" or newer BIM's the firmware chip is changed. Older cards are replaced.

The upgrade pricing used to be pretty favorable. Operator positions and new BIM's were about half normal purchase price. BIM firmware only upgrades were a couple hundred bucks per card.

I have no idea what they charge today. In addition to the hardware for the CEB & OP, you need the new computer(s), software & programming. I would guess you are looking at something in the neighborhood of $20K for the whole job.

xmo


thanks, any opinion comparing the gold elite with the mcc5500 and possibly the zetron 4000 series crt version? I think the mcc is well over 20k and the 4000 series zetron is around 20k +or- i like the reputation of both the gold elite and zetron even if they are pc based.


thanks again

I don't think there is a "wrong" move here since you are comparing quality products that are all appropriate for the application. What would be ideal would be to be able to 'test drive' each product - go to a location where you could see and play with each.

You said the other two were the Cadillac and the Chevy. Well - think of Gold Elite as the Toyota. Maybe not as flashy as some but has been around and is very reliable.

If you ever plan any P25 or MDC capabilities - the Motorola products will have the most complete and seamless integration of these technologies.

xmo


thanks about the most exotic mdc stuff we may do is aliasing, group/individual call alert and obviously ptt-id and emergancy. I dont think we will ever see digital where we are and to be honest thats fine with me. If our local big city (boston) has some kind of p-25 interagency channel come along we could always go the control station route or tie an xtl into the console. The one thing i noticed in the zetron literature was that they have the ability to interface with "nextell" seemelesly (so they say) I dont see the motorola product using that as a selling point at all. for us the nextel interface would be on our wish list, but i would not want to be short sighted and not have that option down the road if out administration has some extra money.

thanks for the imput