Service manual

Guide to ASTRO™ Digital Radios
The ASTRO™ platform uses a 32K x8 EEPROM to store the radio-codeplug in. The same chip—an
Atmel 28C256E, is used in the ASTRO Digital Saber™, ASTRO Digital Spectra™ and the XTS 3000™. It is
fitted in a TSOP-28 package.
Normally hobbyists use leaked copies of Motorola Inc. Lab-tool or Depot software to manipulate
codeplug options such as band-split, serial number or FLASHport™ options. However there are times
when a radio-codeplug is so corrupted, the radio will not longer communicate with the computer and
appear to be dead. There are even occasions where the radio displays fail or error codes not
documented in the service manual. In these instances, it’s necessary to pull the EEPROM from the vocon
or controller board(s) and manually repair the corrupt data.
Depending on the software you may choose for communicating with your chip programming
hardware, it will have an option for loading s-record format files. If you have a known-to-be-good
previously-saved s-record, you may load it and write it to the EEPROM, then install it back to the board.
Your corrupt codeplug problem will be rectified.
Figure 11.4 A leaked photograph showing the inside of the Motorola Inc. CGISS Mexican Depot (MexiPot). Why send your radio to Mexico when
you can work on it yourself?
The Guide to ASTRO™ Digital Radios does not provide links or files which may contain Motorola
Inc. intellectual property. With this said, the firmware could be sitting right in front of you, installed in a
radio that just arrived back from the Mexico depot. Get your SMD rework station out and fire up your
programming computer…30 minutes later your useless eBay VSELP radio could be flashed with the latest
and greatest firmware.