NX-800 Won't Boot Up

[kenwoodgeek]

Hello, everyone,

I'm bothering you again.

I have an NX-800H that I pulled out of one our buses and replaced this past Friday because it stopped working. You turn the thing on, and it just keeps trying to boot over and over again, beep beep beep.

This particular unit had never had any issues up until Friday morning. The bus' alternator was putting out sufficient voltage. The replacement unit I put in the bus works great. On my power supply at home, it does the same thing. I tested to see if it was the control head by switching the head from a good radio, but that head was doing the same thing on the trouble radio. I will note that it was very cold outside Friday morning when the bus was started; it was about -5 degrees Fahrenheit. I looked at the spec sheet for these radios, and it says they can operate down to -22 degrees.

I don't really care about trying to fix the radio (unless it's an easy fix) because the company has hundreds more. I'm more curious as to the possible cause of the issue, especially if it might have been something like a voltage spike from the alternator that fried the unit.

If anyone has info about what might be wrong with the radio and/or what caused it to fail, I would be very interested to know.

Thanks!

 

[ve2mel]

I have same probleme …. I resolved it , I force to flash firmware and up and running again.
good lock and try it…
Eric

 

[kenwoodgeek]

Thanks, Eric. I tried, and it will go into firmware programming, but it starts doing the same thing when I power cycle it again. So I'll plug the laptop in, update the firmware, and report back if it works.

 

[kenwoodgeek]

Nope. I updated the firmware successfully, and it's still doing the same thing.

 

[ve2mel]

sorry for you , but for me it working.

 

[kd4efm]

Do you have a FORMER PASSPORT radio and shoved standard firmware into it?
if so, you have to blank that code plug first before you convert to standard FW.

 

[kenwoodgeek]

Nope, not that I know of.

As far as I know, all of these radios were new when the company purchased them many years ago, and this radio was running version 2.53, I believe. I flashed it up to 5.23. But like I said, it was working flawlessly up until that one cold morning, and then it just started doing this out of nowhere.

 

[mmckenna]

2.53 is really old firmware, so these radios are probably nearing 10 years old.
While that shouldn't be an issue on it's own, it could be that lot of temperature swings, vibration and use has just taken its toll on them.

I'd probably not put a lot of effort into it. 10 years is pretty good for a mobile radio.

 

[kenwoodgeek]

You would be correct about that. I believe the radios were put into service sometime around 2011, so they have been in service a long time, come to think about it. Yeah, they are pretty much all running 2.53, 2.54, and 2.55, and I've actually been going back around and updating the firmware on these NX-800s to 5.23, because we've been having issues with them randomly slipping into talk around, monitor, etc.

Thanks for that advice. I'll just throw it under the bed, and maybe if I feel like it someday, I'll run it over to the local Kenwood dealer and see if they can do a quick fix on it. Might just be a popped component on the motherboard. Like I said, doesn't really matter too much. My company is going to send me on a road trip to one of our other locations to pick up more radios, so we'll be set.

 

[kenwoodgeek]

Just thought I'd post a little follow up. We got three NX-800H units shipped in from the company stock per my request. Just when I thought I had found the oldest firmware version, I discovered one of these units is running 1.18, which is crazy. Truly goes to show how long ago they purchased these radios and the maintenance company's disregard for keeping them maintained and up-to-date (although they do update the programming with any new location channels on the units they are shipping out). Thanks, everyone.

 

[kd4efm]

Truly goes to show how long ago they purchased these radios and the maintenance company's disregard for keeping them maintained and up-to-date (although they do update the programming with any new location channels on the units they are shipping out). Thanks, everyone.

Note to self; it is up to the customer to have the radios firmware updated, It is not a requirement on our behalf to freely update the radios.
That in MOST cases is a radio shop bench charge. Some do it under maintenance contracts, others get it at free will just so we do not cause
a disruption to the customer.

That is treated just like a tire, you can add air to it all the time, but you want it changed, you got back to the tire store to get the tire updated.
bad analogy but you get the idea, SELF MAINTAINED is one thing, End User, Not Self Maintained, you could see 1.xx and up out there to this day!

 

[kenwoodgeek]

Understandable, but we have had our communications company come in and do stuff with the radios (though not for a long time) so I would think that at least the stock being shipped out from them would be updated. Maybe it would be up to our tech department to reach out to them on that, I don't know. I'm just surprised that no one has considered periodic upgrades to avoid firmware glitches, which we have been experiencing on many of the 800s.