Need help, pro 93 wont scan anymore

Status
Not open for further replies.

Nickc9866

Member
Joined
Sep 15, 2009
Messages
15
Location
Iowa
Hello, ive had my 93 for about 1 week now. It worked fine for 3 days then for some odd reason it stopped scanning all my channels. It wont even scan the pre programmed police/fire or ham bands. Ive tried initializing and a manual reboot. Nothing seems to work. Can someone please help.....
 

gmclam

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Sep 15, 2006
Messages
6,335
Location
Fair Oaks, CA
Pro-93

Hello, ive had my 93 for about 1 week now. It worked fine for 3 days then for some odd reason it stopped scanning all my channels. It wont even scan the pre programmed police/fire or ham bands. Ive tried initializing and a manual reboot. Nothing seems to work. Can someone please help.....
When you say "it stopped scanning", can you please be more specific? Does it "scan" but not stop on anything? Or does it just sit on a single channel? Or????

One thing to try is weather. Press the Wx button - do you get weather?

Another thing - can you receive manually? Press MAN. Step through the channels, what do you hear? Do you hear static out of the speaker, or just silence? Perhaps you need to adjust the SQUELCH.

Or perhaps when you are in MAN mode you do not see any frequencies programmed on the display.

With a little more info we can narrow down the probabilities.
 

Nickc9866

Member
Joined
Sep 15, 2009
Messages
15
Location
Iowa
scanner wont scan

In response to your questions.... It wont scan, even on the WX, In manual mode it will just sit on a single bank and blink, wont search the other banks. When going to the preprogrammed freq. like fire/police, it will not move to other freq's. I took it to radioshack today and they programmed it with "some" freq. Still nothing works. Scanner has never been dropped or abused as far as I know.
 

Nickc9866

Member
Joined
Sep 15, 2009
Messages
15
Location
Iowa
scanner not "scanning"

1 other note, I accidently did something called an "EPP Program". What does that mean and is it something I need to be worried about?
 

gmclam

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Sep 15, 2006
Messages
6,335
Location
Fair Oaks, CA
Pro-93

I have a problem understanding your terminology.

In response to your questions.... It wont scan, even on the WX, In manual mode it will just sit on a single bank and blink, wont search the other banks.
Uh huh. In MANUAL mode, the scanner is NOT supposed to scan.

When going to the preprogrammed freq. like fire/police, it will not move to other freq's.
Pre-programmed? It needs to be programmed for your area, but that's not the problem here. Press SCAN to make it "move to the other frequencies".

I took it to radioshack today and they programmed it with "some" freq. Still nothing works. Scanner has never been dropped or abused as far as I know.
Sounds like you are not the original owner. When was the last time it was working? What changed? The software RS uses is bad stuff, there are several threads here on the topic. Either program it manually or use WIN93 (www.starrsoft.com) - it's free.
 

bryonh

Member
Joined
Jul 6, 2007
Messages
54
Location
Central City,IA
Wirelessly posted (Opera/9.60 (J2ME/MIDP; Opera Mini/4.2.14912/960; U; en) Presto/2.2.0)

I work with this guy and what he's told me is. It will not scan anyting. Frequencies he's entered or the pre programed search frequencies. In wx mode it will not hear the one he is maybe 5 miles from. When he hit the scan button it just sits on one channel
 

Nickc9866

Member
Joined
Sep 15, 2009
Messages
15
Location
Iowa
I know enough about the scanner to get it to work. All the buttons work fine. When "scanning" the radio doesn't search the freq's. I can adjust the squelch to get static. I have opened it up and I can see no damage to the scanner. I'm not sure what else is wrong with it. I cant beleive no one else has ran into this problem yet.....
 

kruser

Active Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Nov 25, 2007
Messages
4,987
Location
West St Louis County, MO
What is the thing you mentioned called "EPP Program"? Is that something you found or read about on the internet? If so do you have a link so we can see what it is you are talking about?
 

Nickc9866

Member
Joined
Sep 15, 2009
Messages
15
Location
Iowa
I accidently stumbled across a function on it called EPP PROG. I beleive I turned the scanner off, then while turning it on I hit Function + 5 and it went to an initializing screen.
 

SCPD

QRT
Joined
Feb 24, 2001
Messages
0
Location
Virginia
He means the boot up menu & where you may see DSP version etc . & reset scanner & so forth I think?:) EP PROM menu is what I am trying to say:)
 
Last edited:

Nickc9866

Member
Joined
Sep 15, 2009
Messages
15
Location
Iowa
ok, so now we have figured out what the EP PROM is, can we get down to the problem.... My scanner still doesnt work and im about ready to toss it in the garbage right now. Can anyone give me some pointers on how to maybe fix it or some ideas on what to do to "maybe" fix it. I will try to post a video on youtube to show exactly what it is doing.....
 

kruser

Active Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Nov 25, 2007
Messages
4,987
Location
West St Louis County, MO
Thanks for figuring out what he meant by EPP!

Myself and friends have owned several of these 93 and 95's. None have experienced what I think yours is doing but I have had two 93's were the RF transistor for the VHF portion has failed. The repair on both was a bear as the transistor is under the FCC mandated epoxy coating to prevent unblocking the cell frequencies via images.

I was lucky on both and was able to work a dental pick under a corner of the epoxy and slowly work it up and off with two dental picks. I was really worried that it would pull off many of the SMD components but all remained intact. I became brave at that point and ended up removing the epoxy from all boards without a problem.
I replaced the faulty RF amp transistor and gave both radios an alignment and they are working great once again.

In this case the radios still showed them scanning but would not stop on anything unless they were placed right next to a strong signal source or you opened the squelch.

I've never had to work under the epoxy on any other radios yet. I doubt I'll get as lucky as I did on these two. That stupid epoxy mandate was just stupid and I'd imagine will render most radios useless should a component fail under the epoxy.

Does anyone have any tips on removing the factory epoxy?

On the 93's I repaired, I first tried heating the epoxy with no luck on most areas. I did find some areas that softened and could be swiped or scratched away a bit at a time when using a hot iron tip. The 93's appeared to have two different epoxies. The areas I could heat and scrape were mainly around the metal shield covers while the epoxy poured directly over the components did not seem to be effected by anything but brute upward force from a dental pick or tiny jeweler screwdrivers.
I wonder if the epoxy I was able to heat and scrape was simply not mixed correctly so it never really hardened as it should have. Seeing as I found the same thing on two different radios kind of rules that out though.

For the OP's 93, I would think much of the logic that controls the scanning function should be exposed so an easier repair may be possible.
I do have a factory paper service manual if you need me to try and copy a section of it for your aid. I'm not sure if a PDF version is out on the net but that would help greatly if you can find one.
 

gmclam

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Sep 15, 2006
Messages
6,335
Location
Fair Oaks, CA
PRO-93 problem.

Here is a youtube video showing what exactly is wrong with it - YouTube - pro 93
I am seeing/hearing two problems after looking at the video.

1. You never show the scanner receiving a signal. You show what appears to be a programmed Wx frequency, but no signal. You did adjust the squelch, so I am assuming the scanner DOES NOT RECEIVE.

2. You confused the issue by activating the "SEARCH" command first, but it did appear later you also pressed SCAN. If the scanner was receiving and not scanning, then that would make me think the "hold" signal to the CPU is stuck.

This does not appear to be user servicable.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top