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Help with Uniden PC-122

C

ChristoF

New Member
Sep 13, 2024
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Hi everyone. I'm new to this site but learning about Cb radios day by day.
Uniden PC-122 I'm working on. It transmits and has audio but no receive and the meter stays in key up mode but isn't keyed up, so some help would be grateful. Don't have many Sam's photofacts books. Thanks for the help.
 

Sounds exactly the same way mine died. Was working ok, then stored for a few years, turned it on again after taking it out of storage, dead. Transmit ok but audio was a bit muffled, no receive and signal lights go up on their own like its transmitting, but it happens even without a mike plugged in.

All faults were caused by she tee capacitors, the round grey ones. A guy on the internet sells complete sets of new caps for about 25 dollars, ordered one set and replaced them one by one. Turned radio on, works as good as new, no more work needed.

Google klondike mike pc122 and its the first search result. No connection to the guy, don't even know him, other than as a happy customer of his. Two years on, radio still working great.
 
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Toss it. Buy a used 2010 year or newer Cobra 29. I find these as low as $35 on eBay. If you have to have SSB buy President McKinley or Uniden Bearcat 980.
 
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hpssb said:
Sounds exactly the same way mine died. Was working ok, then stored for a few years, turned it on again after taking it out of storage, dead. Transmit ok but audio was a bit muffled, no receive and signal lights go up on their own like its transmitting, but it happens even without a mike plugged in.

All faults were caused by she tee capacitors, the round grey ones. A guy on the internet sells complete sets of new caps for about 25 dollars, ordered one set and replaced them one by one. Turned radio on, works as good as new, no more work needed.

Google klondike mike pc122 and its the first search result. No connection to the guy, don't even know him, other than as a happy customer of his. Two years on, radio still working great.
Click to expand...
Actually Mike is a member here you can send him a Private message by clicking on his name and selecting start conversation.
@Klondike Mike
And you could ask Dan if he has the correct Sam's in his thread.
The PC 122 is a good little compact radio well worth saving.

73
Jeff
 
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Didn't know he was on the forum, thanks for that. Fixed mine instead of buying a 980 or McKinley as radios with LCD screens seem to die a premature death out here (australian desert). PC122 was fixed when covid was in the news every day so 2021 or 22, still going strong and no crappy LCD to fade away.
 
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nomadradio said:
Try to find a car without a LCD display. Gotta wonder how long those will turn out to last? Not as long as my 1999 Ranger, most likely.

73
Click to expand...
My 1998 Toyota Landcruiser's black and white screen still working fine 26 years and 325,000 km (about 200,000 miles) later. Wife's 2013 Toyota Corolla has a fancy color one, that one is still working too, but only half the age and mileage of mine.

Had two Bearcat 980's purchased new. Screen died on one (used in a car) after 18 months, sold the other one (used in a house) while the screen was still working. Saw the purchaser a year later and found out that screen died too. Toyota ones must be better than Uniden ones, and by a large degree.
 
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hpssb said:
My 1998 Toyota Landcruiser's black and white screen still working fine 26 years and 325,000 km (about 200,000 miles) later. Wife's 2013 Toyota Corolla has a fancy color one, that one is still working too, but only half the age and mileage of mine.

Had two Bearcat 980's purchased new. Screen died on one (used in a car) after 18 months, sold the other one (used in a house) while the screen was still working. Saw the purchaser a year later and found out that screen died too. Toyota ones must be better than Uniden ones, and by a large degree.
Click to expand...
Revise my post for newer SSB CB to President McKinley only. Reading to many Uniden Bearcat 990 with LED screen failures.
 
The newer President McKinley has LCD screen too, probably because it's cheaper than a real meter / LED display. May last OK in colder weather areas, but will prematurely die here (Australian desert).
 
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Now if only someone (else) would come up with a generic bit-mapped LCD or (gasp) OLED display, decode the data stream feeding the factory screen, cobble up sprites to mimic the original screen's dedicated symbols and hack the code to mimic a factory display to the radio's CPU.

Sounds like more work than it's worth, but sure would be cool.

73
 
One of the techs we used to use was working on something similar for the Uniden HR2510. They had a lot of spare time at the tail end of the COVID lockdown era and were working on a replacement display and controller combo to give it things like repeater splits, scanning, user programmable memories using a PC app, and channel blocks with text name display so it could store, for example, all of the 10 meter ham repeaters in one bank. Got version 1 boards made and a prototype running too, like the "chipswitch" thing from the 90's but with a new screen that fitted right in.

Came unstuck and had to pause / cancel that project for a long time due to other activity they were doing a lot more when working from home. Nine months later a new addition to thier family arrived and no more hobby radio work from them at least until the new arrival starts elementary school in a few years.
 
That display looks like independent segments, not dot matrix, but I have not verified that with the scope yet. If that is the case, one could probably just arduino something simple for a display given enough inputs on the arduino.

I think I posted my PLL findings in another thread, and IIRC, it clocks in serial data for RX and TX with every key down and release like the new cobra 25 that uses the same PLL, so offsets would be easy to program in with the arduino.

Putting a display on a micro is something I have yet to do, otherwise I would probably be all over this.

If someone wanted to convert the 980's with blown screens to repeaters, one wouldn't even need the screen. Just clock in what you want it to do and be done.
 

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