Batboard

Will they drop like a rock or will it be cost effective to get them reflashed after rebanding?

It really depends on the cost of the flash upgrade, Nexthell should be footing the bill. If you are programmed on a system legally, talk to your sys administrator, they should be able to include your radio in with their group,and get it acocmplished for -$0-.

SG

I don't see why the channel plan has to be changed, there's nothing different than what there is already

Isn't the new band from 851 up anyhow? Aren't trunked radios 851-868 anyhow?

I don't see why the "rebanding" has to be anything more than retuning duplexers and reprogramming repeaters and control channels.

-Josh

The talkgroup grant OSW sends a channel number, not the actual frequency. With the rebanding, the channel numbers will map to new frequencies. A non-rebanded radio will work, but it'll jump to the wrong channel.

Question is...will it be a CPS upgrade, or an actual flash upgrade?

I believe the answer is yes.

Supposedly, the rebanding flash + CPS will allow the insertion of 8 control channels, 4 pre-reband and 4 post-reband. This will allow subscriber units to be configured with the new control channels as well as the old, so they'll work on the old system. As soon as the new control channels go hot, the radio will switch to the new rebanded system and lock out the old channels.

That way, you can migrate the subscriber units in managable chunks, then migrate the infrastructure, finishing by throwing the Big Switch.

At least, that's my understanding of the whole mess...

Pj wrote:Question is...will it be a CPS upgrade, or an actual flash upgrade?

Like tvsjr said, both flash upgrade and new CPS. If you read the rebanding documents from Motorola, they discuss both.

Ok, well getting back to the original question, it doesn't sound like to me that privately owned 800 MHz astro will suffer as far as value is concerned, assuming that you can get the needed flash into the radio.

The question really is, how many of these radios will need a firmware uplift in order to work correctly with the new flash?

Jay

Jay wrote:Ok, well getting back to the original question, it doesn't sound like to me that privately owned 800 MHz astro will suffer as far as value is concerned, assuming that you can get the needed flash into the radio.

The question really is, how many of these radios will need a firmware uplift in order to work correctly with the new flash?

Jay

It's not just a bit in the flashcode (you won't be "rebanding" your radio by forcing an s-record in). It'll need a full firmware refresh so it knows what to do with the additional control channels as well as the new 800 channelization map.

Okay,

So I don't understand.

If, for example we have a freshly "upgraded" astro saber. This freshly updated radio will have all the upgrades and programming info required to work on the newly banded system..

So...

If you read an S-Record of this radio, and write it to another radio, you will have an exact copy of the "working" radio.

The problems that will result is also copying the serial, model numbers and all programming, including ID's.

This is the same for the xts's. If you read an s record of a astro flashed radio, and dump it into an astro ready radio, you will now have astro.
That is how I understand it, I could be wrong.

Rob

The S-record process transfers only the codeplug - not the firmware - so if you put a post upgrade codeplug into a radio with old firmware - bad things will probably happen.

It would not surprise me for Motorola to close the S-record loophole completely with the rebanding firmware release so that even though you could transfer a codeplug from one post rebanding radio to another with the old LAB - it might not work right.

XMO,

Thank you for the response, I have another question if you could be so kind. I am a little more confused.

When one takes a high feature radio and force feeds it into another radio most of the time all of the features go with it.

So, Where does the firmware come in, and what does it do? What resides in the firmware.

For example, You can take an astro spectra vocon out of a VHF astro spectra, and forcefeed a UHF s record and voila, all the info transfers and works.

Thanks, Rob

Firmware is the actual computer code that runs the radio. The Flashcode that goes along with the codeplug in an S-record transfer is just a set of flags that tell the radio which features it can use. If the firmware does not support a particular feature - then it won't work.

For example - if you push an IMBE image into a radio with VSELP firmware you don't get an IMBE capable radio. If you push an Astro25 trunking codeplug into a radio with the wrong firmware it still won't access an Astro25 trunking system.

Likewise, a post rebanding codeplug will not add rebanding smarts to an old radio. Every time a radio gets a legitimate flash update the process downloads the most current firmware appropriate to the target feature set [like flashing a new BIOS into a PC]

You can find the radio's firmware and DSP versions by reading it with the RSS/CPS or see them on the radio's display by pressing side button #3 [portable] or the home button [mobile] five times in succession within 10 seconds after power up and before pressing any other button.

I would think that if you don't have the radio in inventory when the rebanding is being done Nextel funds aren't going to cover getting it upgraded. What I am waiting to see if how many folks show up to their system admin with a box full of old radios that can't be upgraded like maxtrac, mtx's, etc. and say include all these in the inventory and have Nextel give me all new radios. I plan to list every radio we have that is capable of being on the system whether it is currently in use or not since it is possible we could use them today in case of emergency.

So, I would say, yep if you've got any kind of 800 that isn't covered in a department's or other organizations rebanding inventory it will be pretty much worthless for trunking purposes in about a year.

Dumb question, but what's this going to do for those with trunking scanners? Or do they not look at the OSW for channel data?

One more note I would add to this is that this rebanding has nothing to do with astro or non astro ,it is 800 mhz period. If you have a frequency in your system/license that is in the specified bands it will be rebanded/shifted into the new band plan.