Batboard

I'm taking my first crack at programming my Spectra. So far it hasn't gone well. I am getting an error on the RSS that say's "Serial Bus Error- Power Fault". Periodically, the radio display flashes and cycles through it's self check over and over. The latest msg on the radio is a "Fail 001" that pops up now and then. All the mode labels look OK on the display, but it no longer receives. Bad bad bad.

Any suggestions? I have several Spectra's, so all is not lost, but I'd prefer to not smoke another one, if that is what I've done.

I've checked the obvious.

All help is appreciated.

JIM

Jimfire wrote:I'm taking my first crack at programming my Spectra. So far it hasn't gone well. I am getting an error on the RSS that say's "Serial Bus Error- Power Fault". Periodically, the radio display flashes and cycles through it's self check over and over. The latest msg on the radio is a "Fail 001" that pops up now and then. All the mode labels look OK on the display, but it no longer receives. Bad bad bad.

Any suggestions? I have several Spectra's, so all is not lost, but I'd prefer to not smoke another one, if that is what I've done.

I've checked the obvious.

All help is appreciated.

JIM

FAIL 001 is synthesizer unlock. A number of things can cause this. For starters, check the RF and command boards for signs of leakage around the aluminum electrolytic caps.

In case you've never seen it before, visible symptoms include irregular discolored patches in the solder mask near the caps, and a dulling of the solder pads from bright silver to gray or grayish-black.

Another thing to check for, if you have the extender cables, is to see if the VFO module is putting out what it should, RF-wise.

The above should not prevent you from at least reading the radio. What are you using for a RIB and cable?

Make sure you have adequate power to your RIB. Motorola RIBs can utilize +12V coming from the accessory plug/cable on a Spectra; many after-market RIBs don't and rely on their own battery or wall-wart supply. If the SWB+ line in your programming cable is not present, you need to power the RIB separately.

If you connect an unpowered RIB to a Spectra and turn the radio on, it will go through the power-cycling routine. The RIB loads some signals that the Spectra is sensitive to. Lack of RIB power may also cause the software to report a "power fault".

Of course, this doesn't have a thing to do with your FAIL 001 error or lack of ability to receive anything.

Bob M.

I may be way out in left field here, but have you checked the frequency range of the radio? Another possibilty may be that one or more of the frequencies you've programmed is out of the range of the particular radio. Yes, the RSS will let you enter freqs that are a coupla mHz above or below the indicated range, but the particular radio may not be able to digest it, depending on several factors, one of which can be those leaky caps in the right places.

On the other hand, had a capacitively sound UHF Spectra do the same thing when some 70 cm ham freqs were added by a compatriot. It didn't do it all the time and it stumped me until I checked the codeplug for obvious errors. The reason for intermittency in this particular case was that the added freqs were really freqs that were changed, not added, and they were overwritten in channels that were in the scan list. While in scan mode, once the radio landed on one of the out-of-range channels, it would lock on the channel and display that FAIL moniker, and would throw error messages during the read attempts. If you turned the radio on while not in scan mode, it wouldn't show fail unless you selected one of the bummer channels. Correcting the SAVED codeplug and then reprogramming solved the problem.

Then there was the VHF unit that had a barely out-of-range freq programmed and would just sit and show FAIL continuously and intermittently throw error messages during the read/program attempts. Finally managed to clone a known good codeplug into it between error messages. Unfortunately, it was also suffering from the caps problem. It has since been repaired.

Just a thought or two in addition to seconding the leaky caps suggestion.

Thanks for the replies.

I'm using an RIB Cable that I bought from Meltzer Radio Engineering on Ebay. It looks like a well built cable.

I never got to the point of uploading or downloading data when things went south on me. The radio came out of working service and I was just going to move some channels around.

I powered up the radio on the bench with my power supply. All still working fine. I removed the stock cable and plugged in the programming cable with the pigtail hooked to the power supply. I powered the radio back up and ran the RSS. I tried a comm check from the first RSS menu and thats when things went haywire. Power Fault on the Serial Bus and the radio display starts giving me the fail 001 message. Very irritating.

For obvious reasons, I'm hesitant to plug another radio in and do it again. Does anyone have experience with these cables? The person I bought it from has been very responsive on emails....I dont think it's the cable.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

JIM

CA USAR TF3 member

Jimfire wrote:I powered up the radio on the bench with my power supply. All still working fine. I removed the stock cable and plugged in the programming cable with the pigtail hooked to the power supply. I powered the radio back up and ran the RSS.

NEVER EVER LEAVE POWER ON A SPECTRA WHEN SWAPPING POWER CONNECTORS!

Just ask K4WTF- he smoked his favorite spectra by not turning off the bench supply before changing the accessory connector to the programming plug- 1 small spark, and the FAIL001 was there to stay!!! It took the help of another member here to get the parts replaced.

I'm only admitting this to save somebody else the trouble.

The cable I was using turned out to not be the RIB-less cable I thought it to be. It was just a normal RIB-to-radio cable.

No wonder I was having problems.


Once the RIB shows up, maybe I can save this thing.

Maybe not. We'll see.

Thanks for all the help.

JIM