Batboard

An Astro Spectra with a Flash of Analog only, when forced a codplug of Digital will only Tx Digital not Rx right?? Was thinking of doing this as an experiment but didn't know if someone has already done it or not, and what the results were? If it doesn't what is needed for it to Rx Digital.

this was a problem seen at dayton (maybe 2002)

guy had about 10 "analog" astro spectra 800 mobiles.

he was willing to let them go cheap and here's why:

when an astro radio is sold as "ASTRO READY" (i.e. ANALOG) then the DSP does not have the correct firmware for ANYTHING digital...

i.e. the host in these astro spectras was HST 5.xx.xx and the DSP was A4.xx.xx

A = ANALOG...

so you can bump the flash all you want - until the dsp firmware is upgraded with a "REAL" IMBE upgrade flash.... no digital.

i hope that makes sense

doug

Your Reply made perfict sense. However It doesn't.

I think I shouldn't have said Analog Only, It is flashed with Digital ID Display and G48 Conventional Operation which seem weird in the first place.

400001-000000-1

However it doesn't have IMBE.

I went a head and tried putting an IMBE Codeplug into it and It did like I thought, It will Tx IMBE but not Receive.

Which leads me to believe that it has an IMBE DSP in it but When I read the radio in CPS(Before I Put the other codeplug in.) I get a Firmware of 06.04 and a DSP of _____ (Blank).

Any Idea's

If "ASTRO only" is in the flashcode, then yes, basically you can force all you want but it won't talk digital.

If nothing comes up, then it is typically VSLEP. I would play around with some settings, and I am sure that the digital rx service menu settings need to be adjusted. Try to find a similar radio and record down the settings and plug them in unless you have a service monitor. At least it might get you into range.

When you put the radio into test mode, what does it display for the DSP?

This version is CRUCIAL to answer your question... either it's a screwed up digital because of the "A" DSP or it's possibly VSELP if it's too old.

If the flashcode is what it is now... you won't do very well because the flash doesn't have IMBE in it to start with. The first digit should be odd, not even.

Let's start with the actual DSP version, and then we'll go from there.

tpg

I'm not sure what's going on with this radio. I know it doesn't have IMBE in the flahscode. But it will Tx IMBE (I'm positive on this, it's IMBE not VSLEP.) But the radio still won't give me a DSP version, Even in the service menu it won't scroll through a DSP version. I know it doesn't matter that much but the VOCON Board is a later "D" series. It gives some weird information when you put it into service mode, I'll get that to you here in a little bit.

Thanks guys for the help,

How do you know its IMBE? Are you using another radio to decode, or are you just hearing the digital noise thru a scanner or something?

Pj wrote:How do you know its IMBE? Are you using another radio to decode, or are you just hearing the digital noise thru a scanner or something?

Both, I was listening and it defanently is IMBE Sounding, It is also decoding on another IMBE XTS 3000 that I know for a fact is IMBE.

There is no such thing as "IMBE sounding" - there is only 3600 baud (Smartnet) and 4800 baud (APCO-25).

If the upper levels of the radio are sending 4800 baud APCO-25 CAI, it's going to sound the same no matter whether you are sending IMBE voice, VSELP, or random bits.

(and NO, APCO-25 is NOT 9600 baud. It is 4800 baud, at 2 bits per symbol, for a total of 9600 bits per second. Everybody here who's written a data slicer to recover APCO-25, and written an APCO 25 modulator, raise their hand....)

somebody has time on there hand haha lol

Just to clearify I was listening on a seperate scanner not to the accual voice comming in over the radio!!! Example:

IMBE
http://www.kb9ukd.com/digital/astro-imbe.wav

VSLEP
http://www.kb9ukd.com/digital/vselp.wav

They are defenently different sounding, And the Spectra is Modulating IMBE. I've messed around with the adjustments tried everything I can think of and still no decode?? Oh, Well