Need Help........ again... I'm on a roll here.. APX issue.

[WSCX355]

So please hear me out and no, these are not ebay trash/frankenstein garbage etc. and I am not trying to do anything sketchy here.
So I acquired 2 APX's a 7000 UHF1 and a 7000XE UHF2, both have tags. The XE was having an issue with not being able to keep the clock every time I swapped batteries. So I was good and researched on here and found it needed a new small battery that sits on the VOCOM board. So I go to replace it and take everything apart and in the process the battery holder was only attached on one side. so it was broken and the other side popped off. I also somehow managed to break the ribbon cable on the top control module. What stinks is I have taken these apart before and am usually very careful. I didn't realize I had snapped that ribbon cable so when I go to put it back together no power.... nothing. I didn't realize at the time I had messed up the ribbon cable and thought the VOCOM board was compromised.
Here is where things get messes up... I took the VOCOM out of my UHF1 to test and see if I had messed up the UHF2 on the XE. Well the VOCOM didn't like this and starts updating it and kinda taking inventory of the new UHF2 board, but it finally boots up. So I take it out and put it back into the normal UHF1 7000 and then it now fails self test and throws the FAIL 01/A2 Tuning Codeplug Checksum error.

I can get the CPS R30/R32 to read the codeplug. I DO have a backup of the Turner file and read on here to reload the tuner file. The problem is, I can't get the tuner program to read or write to the radio. I can't update the firmware either because it says it can't see a FLASHCode. SO I am assuming that once it read the wron UHF board and was looking for X parameters and saw y, It doesn't like it.
How do I get the VOCOM board to work again in the radio it came out of?! Sorry for the long winded explanation but I wanted everyone to know how in the world do I get to this error and it was mainly by mistake.

Any help is appreciated.
Ryan

 

[N4KVE]

So you had 2 good APX radios [one didn’t tell time] and now both are toast?

 

[WSCX355]

well technically they both work... they just need some triage!

 

[N4KVE]

I can’t help, except to say I would never have taken apart a good working APX because the clock didn’t work. Hope you learned from this. Good luck to you.

 

[GTR8000]

VOCON, not VOCOM. And you're screwed. You broke the cardinal rule of messing with APX portables by swapping around VOCONs and RF boards. They are mated up at the factory, and once you do what you did, you can't undo it. Not by any legitimate means, anyway, and further discussion of such tools is verboten here on RadioReference.

Oh and the Motorola Depot (the actual repair facility, not the software) will no longer work on APX 7000s, so even if you wanted to spend $600 on flat rate repair, they would be returned as "no longer serviceable".

Time to buy new radios. Hard lesson to learn. Maybe you can sell them both for parts to get some of your investment back.

On the plus side, you no longer have to worry about the audio amp "popping" issue with those radios. 🥴

 

[WSCX355]

Well the XE model still works fine with the other non XE Top Control Module. I come from a computer background and am just used to swapping like for like parts and while troubleshooting hardware had no idea that something like this would happen. I will will just keep the XE and I guess sell the other one for parts at this point. I may just keep it for all the other spare parts that are useful.

@GTR8000 Is there any good sources that I could read to avoid such incidences as it seems like a lot of the guys on here just love to gate keep and avoid topics and such but what seems to me as basic troubleshooting etc. I just wanted them for a hobby and not trying to flip radios etc. Just seemed like a fun hobby to me.

Yeah, Lesson learned. I can just buy another one. It's not a big deal.

Thanks for the help/advice.

 

[jmfirefighter]

Well the XE model still works fine with the other non XE Top Control Module. I come from a computer background and am just used to swapping like for like parts and while troubleshooting hardware had no idea that something like this would happen. I will will just keep the XE and I guess sell the other one for parts at this point. I may just keep it for all the other spare parts that are useful.

@GTR8000 Is there any good sources that I could read to avoid such incidences as it seems like a lot of the guys on here just love to gate keep and avoid topics and such but what seems to me as basic troubleshooting etc. I just wanted them for a hobby and not trying to flip radios etc. Just seemed like a fun hobby to me.

Yeah, Lesson learned. I can just buy another one. It's not a big deal.

Thanks for the help/advice.

Best bet is to register for a Motorola Solutions Learning Account and locate the Basic and Advanced service manuals for the radios you have. A lot of information that you need to know to work on these radios is located in those manuals.