The beauty of the CentraCom II Console

[wa8pyr]

After I got promoted I would often work a double-shift in the Comm Center on Christmas and Thanksgiving to give my people a day off. One such holiday the dimmer switch had failed. I didn't have a spare so I bypassed the switch which left the lights up full brightness. This would stay like that until Monday morning when the electrician could come in an replace the dimmer, as I told Ted who replaced me that night.

I was then off the rest of the weekend and when I returned the lights had all been removed from the fixtures and set neatly on my desk with a note that decorum prevents me from repeating.

Never underestimate the power of a vampire.

We removed half of the fluorescent tubes from the overhead light fixtures at Perry; even when the lights were on it wasn't blazingly bright as it would have been otherwise. Every now and again one of the Trustees would pitch a fit about how "dark" it was and make us put all the tubes back in; that would last about 10 days or so before he forgot all about it and we would pull the tubes again.

Had I been in your shoes when the dimmer failed, the dang lights would have simply stayed off. It needs to be dark in the radio room to properly enjoy watching "A Christmas Story" 16 times in a row (although the Macy's Day parade generally got thrown in there at some point).

I sometimes miss being a dispatcher. . . and then sanity returns.

 

[CCHLLM]

Wow! This thread really brings back the memories of my first exposure to Centracom adventures in a new comm center and new MotherMoto UHF multichannel radio system in 1970. The new Centracoms were such a jump from the old remotes on desk technology. I also concur with the lighting comments. We all ended up with green glass old style articulating arm desk lamps mounted on the consoles at each position. That made life much better, and once they were installed, the overheads were only used by the cleaning crews.

The writing in this thread is also a pleasure to read.

 

[N9JIG]

Had I been in your shoes when the dimmer failed, the dang lights would have simply stayed off. It needs to be dark in the radio room to properly enjoy watching "A Christmas Story" 16 times in a row (although the Macy's Day parade generally got thrown in there at some point).

I sometimes miss being a dispatcher. . . and then sanity returns.

I rarely watch TV myself but if it keeps my guys awake and alert on a slow night I let them. One of the reasons *I* don't watch TV is it puts me right to sleep, not a good thing for the 9-1-1 center. Turn the lights off and I would be out like a light.

I started my career the week I graduated from high school as a dispatcher, a year or so later I was "resting my eyes" at 3AM and the sergeant snuck in and picked up a phone on the other desk and called the emergency number (this was before 9-1-1) and yelled something incomprehensible. I calmly said we would be right there and I hung up and he left mumbling. 20 minutes later he came in with a can of Jolt soda and told me to drink it.

I must be the last guy on the planet to never have seen "Christmas Story". I know it was written by the same guy as "Porky's" but I haven't actually seen it. We had several overhead mounted monitors (actually 40" TV's with VGA) for TV, CAD, cameras etc. and after hours they were allowed to have the one above the window on something other than the weather or news.

The last time I worked Christmas Day (the year before I retired) I wrote the RFP for the new village phone system. It was such a slow day due to bad weather I got the whole thing done that day. In 16 hours we had 12 calls and stops so it kept me from nodding off.

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

Orange volume knobs. NYPD. Every CCII+ position has orange volume knobs. Someone's idea so tech support can tell the dispatcher to "turn the orange knob" or something like that. 72 positions at PSAC 1 then built and shipped PSCA 2 consoles which sat in mothballs for years until finally installed, long after I left Moto.

Were you still at Moto when they created CCSI? When NYPD system staged one of the engineers calculated the amount of 25 pair cable used at each hub site and end to end would make it to Lake Michigan and back! Temp cable trays could barely hold the load.

Sometimes you got to have a solution that does not require the user actually reading the manual!

I left Motorola in 1994 and joined a consultancy. Been on my my own as independent consultant since 2010. In the early 80's I was at "staging" for the City of Miami Smartnet ONE system. That was "staged" in a small lab right off the cafeteria. It was a rudimentary effort as a lot of the wireline dispatch and voting technology was still being invented, even as the system was installed in the field. (Yes very buggy) Then back to CCSI at least two more times for clients including a live demo of the 800 MHz re-banding software upgrade when I was with the 800TA. I wonder what ever happened to CCSI when they demolished Schaumburg ?

Where is that happening now? "in the cloud"?

 

[RocketNJ]

From what I understand, downtown Chicago.

 

[Firebuff880]

Nope - CCSI is out in Elgin.. Very much alive and well.

 

[KG4INW]

Yes, I was at the CCSI in Elgin just this past August. They were working in shifts to limit how many people were in there at once but it was very much a busy place.

 

[RocketNJ]

Ahh thanks for the Elgin info.
I'm now retired but my agency is going to be doing a big upgrade. Too bad, always liked the big dinners when customers came into CCSI.

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

Ahh thanks for the Elgin info.
I'm now retired but my agency is going to be doing a big upgrade. Too bad, always liked the big dinners when customers came into CCSI.

I remember those days. Big Steak Dinner, Booze Cruise on Lake Michigan, Watching a Baseball Game from the executive "box", a boozy Limo ride including an impromptu stop at White Castle at 3 AM. I think that was all in one week. I think we pushed some buttons, unplugged wires and watched some lights and did a few test counts during the days.

 

[davidgcet]

We had a Centracomm Gold Classic CRT and the associated 6809 controller/repeaters staged at CCSI that went in to replace a Centracomm Series II. I didn't get to go, a couple of our other techs did. The NICE thing about it was every end of every cable came to the shop labeled and cut to length. the only thing we really had to custom cut on site at install was grounds and some local controls for doors. I spent a lot of time hanging out with the optimizer when he came down. This was a good thing because the next system that went in we find out the county went cheap and refused to pay Motorola to send a FT to optimize. They said oh well it should work because it is brand new. I had to tell them no you have a couple positions Gold Series B&L tying in to about a dozen radios and sending out 15 different tone codes so a LOT has to be setup. Amazingly it only took me a couple days to get it all working.


My first time ever to lay eyes on a CentraComm was in about 1992 when I was "just an installer". an out of town PD lost their fire channel on one position and since I was in the area our lead tech radioed me to go by and he walked me thru it. This was a Series I and the FD channel was DC controlled. all it took was pulling the DC remote board underneath, cleaning some pins and plugging it back up.

another PD moved their dispatch so often we actually had a 50 pair ring run all thru the PD with 66 blocks in every room large enough to support the furniture. No lie we moved dispatch 4 times in under 2 years, every new chief wanted it in a different area. Good thing was we finally made cables u that terminated to a Centronics plug so we would literally go in, pull it loose, wheel it to the new room and plug it back up. usually less than an hour outage per position. LOL


I actually miss working on consoles, especially since I had so many various ones for the many different counties and agencies.

 

[rescue161]

another PD moved their dispatch so often we actually had a 50 pair ring run all thru the PD with 66 blocks in every room large enough to support the furniture. No lie we moved dispatch 4 times in under 2 years, every new chief wanted it in a different area. Good thing was we finally made cables u that terminated to a Centronics plug so we would literally go in, pull it loose, wheel it to the new room and plug it back up. usually less than an hour outage per position. LOL

Same here, except, they kept moving to new buildings. The first time, it was across the street and about 1/2 mile away. The last time was about a mile further down on a different street. The CEB remained in the original building. It was horrible to maintain and troubleshoot until I finally got to pull the plug. I recorded myself making the final transmission on the old system ID of 2808, but sadly that recording was lost during a hard drive failure. While I was pulling the power from controller "A", controller "B" picked up. I just kept powering things down, but the fail-safes kept trying to keep it on the air. It was funny listening to the repeaters as users went into FailSoft. Even though messages were sent out that users needed to transition to the new system and all radios were programmed for the new system, users still continued to use the old one. I made an ALL CALL that went to all users and told them to change their radios to the new system and was met with "Get off of this net!" I keyed down, made the final announcement and pulled the plugs on the repeaters. Then, our office got a ton of calls about their radios not working and we had to baby-step them into using the new system.

 

[wa8pyr]

I remember those days. Big Steak Dinner, Booze Cruise on Lake Michigan, Watching a Baseball Game from the executive "box", a boozy Limo ride including an impromptu stop at White Castle at 3 AM. I think that was all in one week. I think we pushed some buttons, unplugged wires and watched some lights and did a few test counts during the days.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt (well, jacket); the goodie bags they gave us had "North Face" style Motorola coats, laptop backpacks with the Motorola logo on them, little packs of munchies, bunch of other little odds and ends. I've still got the coat and backpack. We didn't get the ball game, but we did get the lavish dinners and all sorts of other hospitality. I decided then that I like being wined and dined like a big shot.

We actually did put our system through a lot of testing while we were at CCSI. Spent most of a day in there, which was fine because it was mid-November and snowing. Then we went for another lavish meal. The beauty of it was we got chauffeured everywhere; didn't have to worry one little bit about the snowy streets.

 

[N9JIG]

I have been to numerous meetings at the Motorola Museum & Innovation Center. They always provided a great experience to invited guests. There was always plenty of food and beverages of course but the thing I most coveted was the 6x9 brown leather notebooks they passed out. They were the perfect size for the car and meetings. I tried to snag a couple extra here and there and managed to do so but they seemed to disappear from my desk at work often so now, 6 years after retirement, I am left with only a couple. One lives in my car and one in my office, I have a third in my laptop bag for travel.

I was lucky enough to be able to attend hundreds of trade shows, conferences and meetings in my career and acquired boxes worth of bling over the years but this is the thing I most treasure for some reason. I have had this one for perhaps 30 years or more.

Ironically I got this when we were shopping for new consoles, we ended up with ModuCom (a better fit for us at the time) but Motorola was pushing us to the CentraCom II to replace our GE 2500's.

 

[12dbsinad]

I've got enough Centra-com furniture to outfit a medium size dispatch center. All of it will soon be going in the scrap steel recycle. I don't have many end pieces however.

 

[wa8pyr]

I've got enough Centra-com furniture to outfit a medium size dispatch center. All of it will soon be going in the scrap steel recycle. I don't have many end pieces however.

Make sure Rich knows; he'll probably send a truck. . . .