Old 796D will not pick up any P25 transmissions

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ka3nxn

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Hi Gang,

I have 2 older 796D's scanners and one works fine on the system I'm trying to monitor and the other just sits there and never picks up anything. On analog it works great. I did make sure that I updated the non working one to the latest firmware and used the same exact file to program both scanners for the system I'm wanting. First, how do I check on the scanner that it is running the latest firmware? Other than that I have no idea what the problem could be.

Any ideas?

Jaime-KA3NXN
 

kma371

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Hi Gang,

I have 2 older 796D's scanners and one works fine on the system I'm trying to monitor and the other just sits there and never picks up anything. On analog it works great. I did make sure that I updated the non working one to the latest firmware and used the same exact file to program both scanners for the system I'm wanting. First, how do I check on the scanner that it is running the latest firmware? Other than that I have no idea what the problem could be.

Any ideas?

Jaime-KA3NXN

what system are you trying to monitor?
 

scanlist

Scanning since the 70's to today.
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Check to see if the P25 card is enabled in the menu settings. Possible the P25 card needs to be re-seated. There is a setting to adjust P25 decode somewhere in the menu settings as well.
 

ka3nxn

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I'm monitoring the Albemarle county, VA system. Like I mentioned. I have one 796d that can hear the system and one that can't. Both are right next to each other.

The P25 card is ENABLED in both. I'll try reseating it. I had not bothered reseating it because in the past when that was the issue I would see that the scanner would report that the card was not present when I powered it up. This scanner does show that it does detect the card when it is powered up and it shows it at 9600 baud.

The only options in the menu for P25 settings that I can find are to ENABLE or DISABLE it. There are not other P25 settings in this unit, unless there's a hidden menu somewhere that I can't find.
 

ka3nxn

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Also, how do I check the firmware that is in the scanner? In my other 396 it shows it on power up. I can't find it anywhere on this unit. I have no way of knowing if it took the rebranding update that it needs for operation. When I apply the firmware it goes through and I get no errors so I'm assuming it took.
 

ProScan

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ka3nxn

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I figured it out!!!

I tried re-seating the P25 card and that didn't help. as a final move of desperation, I decided to try a totally different program and a fresh database to program the scanner, and it worked. I had been using my full copy of Butel ARC-250, also on 2 different PC's and this is what was not working. The scanner would take the programming but it wouldn't pickup anything while scanning. I decided to try Proscan and create a new database from the download of Radio Reference and low and behold, it's working. There must be some corrupt data that the ARC-250 is either downloading from Radio Reference or it's corrupting the data when sending to the scanner. When I check the settings between the scanner that worked and the one that didn't they were identical.

Don't you just love technology????

Thanks for all the replies.
 

dave3825

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Did both scanners have the latest firmware ? Did both scanners have the correct band plan information?
 

kd2pm

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Keep in mind that the 796 I believe only does phase 1 so systems or agencies using phase 2...you may not be able to hear
 
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