The Radio Information Board

Everytime I call Vertex for help in solving a problem, their only answer is to update the frimware in the radio and control head. Has updating firmware ever fixed a broken or intermittant radio for you?

What do you nedd help with?? I, or one of the others here may be able to help. We have run into that also, and mostly solve our own teknical delimeas.

I have not ever upgraded head firmware in any radio. It has always been current. Radio, yes.

PB

Firmware has never been an issue for me. I avoid upgrading unless there is new feature or bug fix I need. Recently the 920 series had problems with bricking the Cimmaron ani boards upon firmware upgrades. It turned out that they were not compatible so Cimmaron issued a revision which solved the problem, but you can still brick them if you don't know ahead of time.

I had two radios recently that were dropped and the cpus needed to be resoldered to the board. Other than that all my vertex hardware issues have been minor stuff like buttons and displays cracking.

The Vertex depot charges a flat rate of $79 plus parts to diagnose/fix all of the Vertex line. If you suspect hardware is the problem and the radio is not a vx-131, 160 or 180 then you should consider sending it in for repair.

I don't have any recommendations on the remote head mobiles, but here's a useful trick:

An easy way to check firmware version with the 820 / 920 series:

Hold down the "lamp" key while turning on the radio. It will go into a "demo" mode.
Click once for scrolling characters
Click again for serial #
Click again for Firmware version

Example: 0143 VHF 94 = Firmware version 1.43 VHF band, VX-924

Almost forgot...

If you rotate the channel selector in this mode you can see all available options of the multi-color LED