I haven’t been able to drum up one of those Channel King boards anywhere.
Actually just made a post about it the other day.
If you happen to find one please let us know.
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UNIDEN BEARCAT 980SSB "Cracked."
- Thread starter unit_399
- Start date
I haven’t been able to drum up one of those Channel King boards anywhere.
Actually just made a post about it the other day.
If you happen to find one please let us know.
Just an FYI on this, even though it's an older thread. Mark did develop an almost complete working mod kit for the 980 but has given up on it for the time being.
The 980s have been suffering from display issues. His kit replaces the MCU but uses the factory display board. Apparently all versions of the 980 have been having display failures at an alarmingly high rate. I believe half of the screen goes out first.
For the time being he has put the project on hold it seems.
He also makes the channel king board but only seems to sell them to Mikesradiorepair.
I think he just doesn't want to advertise and sell them himself do to the legality of it. Who knows.
Unrelated to the 980, I think the Troy radio DDS-VFO is the best channel mod out there right now, and the cheapest but requires more work to install. The lesscom channel boards seem outdated and over priced but look like the easiest to install.
I'm currently doing the troy dds-vfo in a few radios and have a digi-max on the way to play with as well.
The 980s have been suffering from display issues. His kit replaces the MCU but uses the factory display board. Apparently all versions of the 980 have been having display failures at an alarmingly high rate. I believe half of the screen goes out first.
For the time being he has put the project on hold it seems.
He also makes the channel king board but only seems to sell them to Mikesradiorepair.
I think he just doesn't want to advertise and sell them himself do to the legality of it. Who knows.
Unrelated to the 980, I think the Troy radio DDS-VFO is the best channel mod out there right now, and the cheapest but requires more work to install. The lesscom channel boards seem outdated and over priced but look like the easiest to install.
I'm currently doing the troy dds-vfo in a few radios and have a digi-max on the way to play with as well.
I wonder what is failing in the display and if its fixable.
My 980ssb is also suffering from fading display and its barely a year old.
Gerhard Maurer
An odd and humorous individual. Who else would sell a board to convert your 29LTD into a SSB radio?
http://funkservice.at/cb-radio.htm
Mac
Claims to solder upside down. His channel selectors only turn counter clockwise. He is the designer and builder of the worlds second most interesting DDS-VFO
WWW: www.CircuitDomain.com
www.circuitdomain.com/Projects/DigiMaxLite/DigiMaxLite.htm
Email: Sales@CircuitDomain.com
I mean as long as we're all necro posting I thought I'd fill in the blanks ....
An odd and humorous individual. Who else would sell a board to convert your 29LTD into a SSB radio?
http://funkservice.at/cb-radio.htm
Mac
Claims to solder upside down. His channel selectors only turn counter clockwise. He is the designer and builder of the worlds second most interesting DDS-VFO
WWW: www.CircuitDomain.com
www.circuitdomain.com/Projects/DigiMaxLite/DigiMaxLite.htm
Email: Sales@CircuitDomain.com
I mean as long as we're all necro posting I thought I'd fill in the blanks ....
CB funk has been around a long time and there's another place in Germany that builds custom radios like this.
The guys over in the UK were playing with EPROMS for CB radio long ago while we kept cutting traces and sticking Lou's expander kits in.
The guy that was building Jentec Cobra is one that was doing cool stuff burning his own chips.
73
Jeff
The guys over in the UK were playing with EPROMS for CB radio long ago while we kept cutting traces and sticking Lou's expander kits in.
The guy that was building Jentec Cobra is one that was doing cool stuff burning his own chips.
73
Jeff
I've got an almost new 980 with display problems as well. Bought it new on CL and tossed all the paperwork, not sure what to do with it.......
Toss it and buy another. The repair will cost nearly what a new one would.
Heh, heh....
Took me a moment, then I remembered he's down under.
Hyuk!
His stuff does work. Hooked up one of his boards "almost" right once. Only hammered the output-port chip, the rest was okay. Worked fine once I obtained the replacement.
73
Yea Toss it my way I'll pay the shipping.
Has anyone diagnosed the failure mechanism of these displays yet? I have one of these and it is starting to act up.
The only thing I can find online regarding LCD failures (in general, not for this radio) is due to a DC voltage being used to drive the segments and that using DC can remove the ITO coating from the anode and/or cause whiskers to grow from the backplate through the liquid crystal cavity and short it out.
I don't even know if it is due to a DC drive signal/floating voltage issue or not, but i would like to find out. Any info, even if just for the display module itself and not the board would be very helpful. If it is a DC signal, I don't know how I could convert that many signals to AC. I thought about using a DC blocking capacitor at the backplate connection and interrupting it at an appropriate AC rate, but I don't think that will work unless the anode plates are floating when not being driven, otherwise i just move the problem to adjacent anode plates instead of across the LC cavity..
Has anyone really dug into this issue or does it remain a mystery?
The only thing I can find online regarding LCD failures (in general, not for this radio) is due to a DC voltage being used to drive the segments and that using DC can remove the ITO coating from the anode and/or cause whiskers to grow from the backplate through the liquid crystal cavity and short it out.
I don't even know if it is due to a DC drive signal/floating voltage issue or not, but i would like to find out. Any info, even if just for the display module itself and not the board would be very helpful. If it is a DC signal, I don't know how I could convert that many signals to AC. I thought about using a DC blocking capacitor at the backplate connection and interrupting it at an appropriate AC rate, but I don't think that will work unless the anode plates are floating when not being driven, otherwise i just move the problem to adjacent anode plates instead of across the LC cavity..
Has anyone really dug into this issue or does it remain a mystery?
It just occurred to me to try the Carlson's Super Probe on the display. It does use some form of AC signal as I can hear it with the probe, but I must get the probe almost touching the display to pick it up. Every other LCD display in this house I can detect from an inch away or better (my phone almost a foot away).
So we know it isn't DC driven now, which is one huge problem avoided, but maybe there could be a leaky capacitor allowing some DC bias on the display anodes.
Sorry for thinking out loud here, just hoping someone else is travelling the same road.
Edit: or maybe its not a leaky capacitor, but some other mechanism leaving a floating charge on it that does the same. Maybe each anode needs a 4.7MΩ discharge resistor to keep them all at 0vDC. In either case, I think this project will hit a wall, its a lot of anodes and fixing that kind of problem is not going to be practical. Gonna open this thing up after the holidays and see what it looks like
So we know it isn't DC driven now, which is one huge problem avoided, but maybe there could be a leaky capacitor allowing some DC bias on the display anodes.
Sorry for thinking out loud here, just hoping someone else is travelling the same road.
Edit: or maybe its not a leaky capacitor, but some other mechanism leaving a floating charge on it that does the same. Maybe each anode needs a 4.7MΩ discharge resistor to keep them all at 0vDC. In either case, I think this project will hit a wall, its a lot of anodes and fixing that kind of problem is not going to be practical. Gonna open this thing up after the holidays and see what it looks like
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I had one display that failed that was unused. So, I am not so sure about the hypothesis you have.
I think you just crushed any little bit of hope I had at finding a cause/solution. Good to know. Thanks
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