Batboard

I've got an AS3 with a real old firmware/DSP (DSP of A05.01.03, firmware AP_R03.32.00.) Radio is ASTRO-Ready only, and has a 512KB vocon. I'd like to make it do IMBE.

My understanding (perhaps wrong?) is that the only way to get this updated is to depot the radio, and they'll upgrade the firmware to the latest. (But I also understand that the 7-series firmware won't fit in a 512KB radio?) How exactly does this work? More importantly, how much will I pay to have this done? Is it correct that they don't do flash upgrades at all for the general public?

Motorola is a PITA if you're trying to get an old radio that's not being ordered from the upgraded or flashed. The IMBE uplift itself is around 700$ and way not worth the effort. You can pick up an entire IMBE equipped radio for around the same price or even less of that silly upgrade motorola charges for that you can't get anyways.

As for the 512k vocon, you can have IMBE in a 512k vocon, however, i'm not familiar with how motorola handles an upgrade like that, or if they even will. I know that version 7 HOST has a lot of features for Astro 3600 baud systems and if you want 9600 abilities you need to stay with version six, however, I don't think any of the recent firmware flashes would even fit, so they'd probably either upgrade the vocon to 1 MB like the Xts 3000 or put version 6 in there