Zetron MDC question

[tommed67]

Our Town is almost done with the new police station/communications building project. They are in the radio programming/testing phase, they have installed a new zetron system. The company they hired to program the system has told the Fire Chief that the new system wont display radio identifiers because our current Kenwood radios are non MDC and that all of the police cruisers will not identify also because they are non MDC. Is this correct or misinformation because the programmer just does not want to enter all of the codes? At this time I do not have the Zetron system info or programing software info but I may be able to get

Thanks Tom

 

[mmckenna]

Depends on what vintage of Kenwood radios they are. Some of the older stuff was built/designed while MDC-1200 was under patent with Motorola. When the patent expired, more companies started offering it. Some of the older Kenwood radios could have a firmware update to allow MDC, and all of the newer stuff supports it out of the box.
If you can supply model numbers, we can provide more information.

The Zetron systems will absolutely support MDC-1200, I've got a 4048 and have MDC running on it just fine from Kenwood radios.

 

[Giddyuptd]

What model of portables, mobiles are in use?

 

[speedway_navigator]

I worked with an agency that didn't know / wasn't told MDC1200 display was an option that needed to be purchased for the radio gateways.

 

[12dbsinad]

I worked with an agency that didn't know / wasn't told MDC1200 display was an option that needed to be purchased for the radio gateways.

Depending on the system, MDC is an option that is decoded at the CIC (console interface) card, not the radio gateway. This is true for the 4000 series systems, not sure about the MAX IP system, although I would assume it's similar.