XTL1500 Accessory cable - is it needed?

[rjvalenta]

does the XTL1500 require the accessory harness/cable in back be connected?

i have one, the wires from it connect to nothing, no speaker, no ignition sense, nothing. but if i remove it, the radio will not turn on. it may light up for a second or two, but it will not stay on. the harness has 1 red wire connected to nothing, and the speaker wires connected to nothing.

someone said to me, "you can probably disable whatever it's trying to do in the CPS" but i can't find that anywhere, other than the Ignition Switch setting, which shouldn't matter because it's not connected to anything.

current CPS setting: Radio Wide -> Advanced -> Ignition Switch -> BLANK

with the harness in place, everything works perfectly... with this ball of wires dangling off the back, connected to nothing.

so - is this harness always required for some reason (and if so, why?), or can i disable whatever is causing the need for this harness in the CPS? (and if so, where?)

and, while i know the XTL2500 and XTL5000 need the harness for the speaker, does the same apply to them?

thank you

 

[Forts]

It's been a while since I've messed with an XTL but I seem to recall you need to jumper pins 14 & 15 (Ground and Emergency). I seem to recall my radio wouldn't power up without this in place. I could be internal to the plug you are using.

 

[KG4INW]

It's been a while since I've messed with an XTL but I seem to recall you need to jumper pins 14 & 15 (Ground and Emergency). I seem to recall my radio wouldn't power up without this in place. I could be internal to the plug you are using.

This is correct. Here's what the installation manual states:

In Dash mount configuration, it is mandatory that a rear accessory cable be attached
at the back of a midpower transceiver, in order to ground the Emergency pin to GND.
Or, an emergency footswitch or pushbutton switch must be attached at the back of
a midpower. If the emergency pin is not grounded, upon the attachment of the A+
cable at the DC connector, the radio will detect a HIGH for the emergency pin state,
and assume that emergency has been activated. This will attempt to power on the
radio, and will result in excessive current draw and incorrect radio operation.

 

[rjvalenta]

It's been a while since I've messed with an XTL but I seem to recall you need to jumper pins 14 & 15 (Ground and Emergency). I seem to recall my radio wouldn't power up without this in place. I could be internal to the plug you are using.

thank you both for the replies.

ok, so if i want to get rid of this ball of wires (without cutting up the harness i have) i need an accessory connector with the emergency pins internally grounded... which i can either make or maybe buy pre-made... anyone have a source for the needed basic parts?

 

[clbsquared]

thank you both for the replies.

ok, so if i want to get rid of this ball of wires (without cutting up the harness i have) i need an accessory connector with the emergency pins internally grounded... which i can either make or maybe buy pre-made... anyone have a source for the needed basic parts?

You already have it. Just disassemble the current plug and remove the speaker and ignition sense leads. The jumper is already in there.

 

[jeepsandradios]

Or leave them attatched so when you need it later it can be used. Every control station I've installed I run ignition to PS anyway in case power blips. Speaker wires just hang there.

 

[dickie757]

I read this thread when it first posted, about two weeks ago, and today it helped diagnose an emergency button failure on an upgrade on APX8500. This new APX 8500 does not have an external way to connect the normally closed switch that opens the circuit to send the alarm. I took the 26 pin "trapezoid" apart and found the jumper. I then soldered wires to the cut jumper that lead to the switch. It worked as expected. Thanks for posting all the info in here.

Now, going forward, I think part of the issue is the control head...an O3. I wasn't part of the grip n rip, so not sure what the O3 replaced. Is there a way to connect the "10-33" button without opening the 26 pin connector? Or, can I remove the jumper and pins and replace the pins/wires with longer wires? We are going to have quite a few of these come in, and if I have to solder longer wires to the jumper, it would make sense to do a bunch at one time.

The old radio that is retired is XTL with a Federal siren box, that I have never touched before.

I got it to work, but it's kind of a hack. Not my workmanship, but what has to be done.

Again, thanks for you'se guy's input.

 

[ElroyJetson]

I assume that this applies to the XTL1500 as it takes the same accessory cable with the same functions as an APX6500. I recently reconfigured a pile of APX6500s to no longer require a 12 volt input on the accessory power cable to turn on. So I am going to guess that this can be donne with an XTL as well.

After making this change, the radio only requires power on the main power plug.

 

[N4DES]

I assume that this applies to the XTL1500 as it takes the same accessory cable with the same functions as an APX6500. I recently reconfigured a pile of APX6500s to no longer require a 12 volt input on the accessory power cable to turn on. So I am going to guess that this can be donne with an XTL as well.

After making this change, the radio only requires power on the main power plug.

Yes it does, I have a VHF XTL1500 in my shack configured that way. Even after a power bump it comes right back on.

 

[Project25_MASTR]

On all dash mount XTL's emergency must be jumped to ground in order for the radio to boot thus they need to have an accessory plug with at least that jumper (which is inside of the ignition sense harness to begin with. Remote mounts are an exception as high power bricks don't need emergency jumped and I don't really remember what mid-power remote mounts need as all the ones I still have are pulling ignition and power off the brick and not the control head power lead.

You can disable ignition sense (i.e. blank) on an XTL but as stated the radio won't always remember state in the event of a power blip. The one exception to that is of course, the XTL1500 with it's "MX" control head as the volume pot has a physical switch in it for power.

Now APX radios, you can blank both ignition sense and the emergency to ground requirement as confirmed by my APX1500 sitting on my desk running R29.00.00 firmware (upgraded from R16.00.00 where I had it doing the same thing). Note, the O2 control head uses a button for power unlike it's predecessor...so ignition sense is a good idea.

Typically, if I didn't need ignition sense, I would pull the line out of the connector (it's a standard D-SUB extraction) and leave the speaker lead (nice to always have the option to add a better speaker later) and the internal jumper regardless of the emergency jumper requirement. Just makes it easy and backwards compatible if I have to throw a legacy XTL in a pinch.