Never had this happen before with my BC346XT

[NWI_Scanner_Guy]

This past weekend I was out and about running some errands, and as I usually do, I had a scanner along with me; in this case my 346XT. Had no problems with it whatsoever. It was picking up local PD and FD transmissions, along with area Hams.

Fast forward to this morning. Was once again out and about with my 346XT. When I turned it on, the first thing I noticed was that my normal "greeting" message was replaced with the generic message. Next thing that I noticed was the scanner was telling me there was nothing to scan. Tried turning on different systems, but got the 'nothing to scan' message each time. Thinking I may have accidentally locked everything out (I have done that before), I let it go until I got back home. Once home, I hooked it up to my computer using Freescan. Came to find out all the programming was gone. It was like the entire scanner had been reset.

Any idea what could have caused this? It was fine when I turned it off Sunday afternoon, and then totally blank this morning. This has got me both stumped and worried that it may happen again.

Would like to hear your thoughts. Thanks.

 

[nd5y]

It could be corrupted memory. It could be the processor or memory failed or is about to.
Do a hard reset and reprogram it.
If that doesn't fix it then determine if the 346XT has field upgradable firmware. If so, reload the firmware, do a hard reset and reprogram it.
If that doesn't fix it, it probably has bad memory or a bad processor and will need to be repaired by Uniden.

 

[pinballwiz86]

Someone switched your scanner out bro. You're under surveillance.




lol..no but seriously what he said. ^^^

I hope you have a backup of your scanner programming on your computer.

 

[K8LEA]

SouthSide:

I've got a Yaesu FT1500M in the car - it's been there forever. (Well, since they became available - a $150 2M FM Transceiver with a whole bunch of channels, PC-programmable, CTS but not DCS, and a bunch more features.)

About once a year, the thing starts losing channels. Pre-programmed stuff turns from "PODUNK PD" to "0031832" sorts of things, and frequencies, when displayed instead of alpha text, also get scrambled. Those channels also quit working.... Eventually, one fine day, the thing is dead....

Pretty simple to take the notebook out to the car and reset the radio (although the button dance on the radio's front panel's difficult when sitting beside it), and all's well. Sometimes it's a "new radio" reset, and sometimes just a reload. (The former's a real dance!)

What it appears to be is that a pulse from the power system hits the thing in a way that just confuses the microprocessor. I need to cook up a snubber of some sort to avoid that. Someday.... The Yaesu is powered directly from the battery, through a relay. I tend to forget to power radios on and off via the ignition switch. I think Yaesu's answer is to use the front panel button ....

My vote for the scanner is similar - the battery's a little "off", and the radio interprets "power up" as just about anything wrong. Poof.... Transitory errors in memory aren't unusual at all....

Panic if it does it again in a week or two....

BTW, the reason I bought the BCD396XT was that the local PD went APCO25 on me, and the Yaesu doesn't know what that means. It also doesn't scan 800 mhz, but that's another story .

(Reminds me - check the battery terminals for corrosion & crud. That can't help....)

Regards,

 

[NWI_Scanner_Guy]

Thanks everyone for your replies.

Well, so far I've had no problems since reprogramming the 346. I did not save a copy of the 346 programming (yeah, I know, silly me), but what was on it was pretty much a carbon copy of what I have programmed into my BCT15X, so I just downloaded that radio's programming into Freescan, made a few tweaks then uploaded that into the 346. So far so good.

Keeping my fingers crossed that I don't run into that problem again. The 346 is one of my workhorse scanners, and I'd hate to see it crap out on me.

 

[davedaver1]

I've got a Yaesu FT1500M in the car - it's been there forever.

The FT-1500M was somewhat famous for glitching on low or spiky power. I had one, drove me nuts - happy was the day when that thing went away! On a good stable power supply it was fine, in the vehicle it sucked.

 

[K8LEA]

Dave:

Other than DCS capability (which it doesn't have), the FT1500M has been fine, except for gradually dropping channels and the once or twice a year poof....

I think the storage for the various channels needs a stable power source, and it's not getting it. OTOH, mine gives me a bit of warning - trashing one channel at a time for a while until it goes completely off the wall.

If I'm out of town, though, that's a PITA.

During power on (and power off) cycles, the voltage goes all kinds of nuts in a vehicle. Something is getting around whatever protection is in there. No real damage appears to be happening, though.

(I wouldn't want to lose the thing - it's long since paid for itself, and with APCO25 blowing me out of monitoring the local PD, it's still working fine on the remaining hi-band sources. If I get some money together for an APCO-compliant radio in the car, I don't know. I don't think I've used the Ham transmitting capabilities in years.)

All of this is a little off-topic , but the BCD396XT seems to have design issues with respect to power, too, and I think that could be related - particularly if the mobile power cord is in use. IMHO, about any software-defined radio (which these things essentially are) is potentially subject to misinterpreting "noise" (power fluctuations, cold-weather related issues, terminal corrosion) as a command. This may take a cleaner supply (or protection circuitry) than we've got here.

Just IMHO, although a radio may not have a control program like FreeScan, stuff like the BCD396XT or my Yaesu FT1500M really don't have much happening that's not in software. The Yaesu's volume control is real , but that's about all. The 396's is a pulse generator that tells something that you've asked for a level change. How much is unchangeable is up to the designers, but it's possible that everything might be open except the keyboard dance necessary to light up the "load new firmware" function, and there are ways around that.

(I have visions of my "smartphone" deciding to be a lawn mower.... Somehow, having to re-boot a phone in order to clear a function seems a little nuts, but don't get me started on the Droid X.... )

Regards,