XL-200p bootloop with new housing

[K2NEC]

This one is a bit of a head scratcher for me. I currently have a yellow IS housing on my XL200p (Part #14035-1120-02) and I purchased a black IS housing (Part #14037-1123-01) and after installing the housing the radio is in a boot loop where it will display the "Harris XL Radio" on the top screen then just power off and cycle. Anyone see this before or know how to fix it?

Seller says I might need to upgrade the firmware, maybe it's too old and not compatible with a new housing?

 

[K2NEC]

Upon further investigation it seems that my current yellow housing is a Non IS even though it has the green IS sticker on the bottom. I purchased an IS housing with the thought that it was an IS radio. It seems like these two are incompatible, I'm awaiting for a response from the seller

 

[nikronzo]

I am not aware of any discrepancies software-wise between IS and non-IS, I did a front housing upgrade last month with one of those ebay ones, upgraded from a M2 Black to a M3 full keypad green all non-IS with no issues. The only two connections should be the main interface cable and the GPS antenna connector back to the RF deck. I do believe there is a IS options somewhere in RPM2, but I never have played with it and would have to look up where it is. What firmware are you running and do you have the service manual?

 

[K2NEC]

I'm on R10D08, I think that's pretty old

 

[wa8pyr]

I'm on R10D08, I think that's pretty old

Actually you're not too far off; the current stable version is R12H10. There may be a newer one but I haven't rolled it out yet as R12H10 is working fine, and I don't want to introduce bugs into the fleet.

 

[K2NEC]

Does R14 have anything that R10 doesn't that I could potentially be shooting myself in the foot if I upgrade? Can I downgrade to R12 if R14 doesn't work either?

 

[nikronzo]

XLP_R14D007 is the second to latest. It is stable and ive been running it for about 2 months. There are a few features and bug fixes in it, no problems so far.

 

[K2NEC]

Ok. I upgraded the firmware with the same issue persisting. The seller agreed to swap the housing with a Non IS model, will report back when that happens

 

[sbk1982]

There are a ton of changes to the XL firmware jumping from R10 to R14. There are a lot of problem resolutions to read up on.

 

[wa8pyr]

Does R14 have anything that R10 doesn't that I could potentially be shooting myself in the foot if I upgrade? Can I downgrade to R12 if R14 doesn't work either?

Firmware R12 fixed a number of bugs in R10. We've been running R12H10 for a few months and it's working fine. I won't roll out a new version until I've had a few people testing it awhile to make sure it doesn't break something important (Harris seems to do that quite a bit).

My latest hitch is a bug in RPM2 R14; I had to move back to R13 because R14 was chopping off channels in zones with more than 15; even though the personality had 16+ channels in a zone, anything over 15 wouldn't show up in the radio. Kind of a bummer as R14 adds a few changes and features I've been looking forward to; have to wait awhile longer...

 

[sbk1982]

If you're only using 16 channels in a zone, add a 17th for now and the 16th will then appear. If you have "A" channels then A-1 is what's appearing. What really sucks about his particular problem is when you're maxing out the groups within a zone and that last one is just as important as the rest of them. I hear the fix will be released in February.

 

[wa8pyr]

If you're only using 16 channels in a zone, add a 17th for now and the 16th will then appear. If you have "A" channels then A-1 is what's appearing. What really sucks about his particular problem is when you're maxing out the groups within a zone and that last one is just as important as the rest of them. I hear the fix will be released in February.

I was told end of Q1 for the fix.

Adding a 17th channel is an interesting thought for a temporary fix, but I'm not going down that road; I'd just have to go back and undo it later. Definitely not switching back to R14 until I know the bug has been fixed; took a bit of doing to roll back to R13 and I don't want to do it again if R14 continues to hork things up.

 

[ElroyJetson]

Put the radio back in your original housing and see if it works normally.

 

[K2NEC]

Ok so I was able to get a non IS housing from the seller and it works fine. Apparently the radio is non IS and is completely incompatible with IS type housings.

 

[ElroyJetson]

I'm kind of amazed that they would make radios that have to be mated with specific housing variants to work. I guess it makes sense from a critical incident/safety of life perspective, though. Can't have non-IS radios shoved into IS environments. If something bad happens, whomever did the housing swap could be in heap big doo doo.

 

[BMDaug]

This seems like something either faulty with a component of that particular IS housing, or something with the mission plan… aren’t there IS specific settings in RPM? Is there some sort of radio maintenance process you need to go through to tell the radio it’s IS? Is there a particular firmware revision necessary for an IS radio? Is there a feature or capability that must be present for an IS radio to function properly?

All of these are potential variables and I have no hands-on experience with the 200P… yet!

-B

 

[K2NEC]

The seller was telling me that the radio does a handshake with the housing to check the EEPROM values and calibration. I guess if its the wrong type of housing it doesnt like it. He said he would look into it whether it's an issue with that specific housing or not.