UNIDEN BEARCAT 980SSB "Cracked."

[Enterprise312ok]

Lets just put that same display on our new President George.
They may have found a solution, or they have deep pockets for warranty work.

 

[nomadradio]

First time I remember reading about the nature of driving a LCD display was over 50 years ago in a data book for RCA LCD-driver chips. It stressed that the drive waveform had to be a perfect AC waveform with equal energy in the positive polarity and negative polarity sides.

Sure wish I still had that book. It went into excruciating detail about the need for this "AC-only" spec for the drive waveform, and how RCA made it happen with their LCD-driver chips from 1970.

They described the chemical degeneration in the LCD that any asymmetry or "net DC" potential would cause to the display.

This may or may not have anything to do with LCDs going south on this radio, or Cobra 29LX or any other. Just sounds like what I remember from RCA's warnings about "rolling your own" driver circuits.

73

 

[AudioShockwav]

I see where LesComm has figured out how to get an extended frequency range on the Uniden 980 ssb rig. Trouble is ... good old Lester is too selfish to share with the rest of us how he did it. What's the matter, Les ?? I remember when you were in the Navy and the editor of SECRET CB, and how you used to make mods you developed public knowledge. Wassa matter ... No mas ??? Come on, man. Share your 980ssb freq mod with the rest of us so we can enjoy dxing on 27.415 to 27.785 with our 980s. Eventually someone else will figure it out, and then they'll end up getting the credit. So give it up and make yourself a hero. Thanx and 73s.

- 399

Toby at TRS posted this today.

 

[unit_399]

Jeff -
I bought 980 SSb in 2020 as a radio for Luz to run in her Renault Duster Oroch. She said ,"NO WAY." A year later I bought an Anytone Quad 6, but again she preferred her modded 138XLR. Ended up selling them both.

 

[Squints]

Heres an idea.... Instead burning your money on new and improved hacks for your cb radio to get extra channels
Just go out and buy yourself a used hf radio

He's absolutely right these uniden 980s are a waste of time really so hand that 980 to your kids and buy yourself a quality radio like a president McKinley or if 10 meter is your thing can't go wrong with Anytone 10 meter radios line the quad 6 ECT lots of power good sound all around tops .

 

[brandon7861]

I just watched that LesComm video again and what I don't understand is if he is able to write to the processor, this should be a done deal. I figured out the PLL serial data and could make one go anywhere I want with a micro, so if Les knows how to reprogram the micro, maybe he should tell us how so we can pick up where he left off.

I don't have the ambition to study that datasheet.

 

[brandon7861]

I deleted my post suspecting that he didn't actually reprogram it on account of the display being the same because I can't prove it one way or the other. What I will say is that it would have been interesting if he would have demonstrated receive along with the transmit being freebanded because the micro and PLL do the RX/TX shifting on key down and key up (using the same half of the PLL for both).

Did Les freeband TX only, or did he change RX too? That PLL data is serial. If he was able to reprogram that, and the TX/RX switching, why not the display too?

 

[brandon7861]

ok, my dummy light just came on. Why not use a micro to intercept the serial data, interpret the channel number, and then provide different pll data for that channel based on the position of a toggle switch. To hell with the display. I just don't know if it would be fast enough to not notice the TX/RX shift.

I see an arduino project here. With that, we could program our own channel tables! My PLL post is [here] if anyone wants to try. That post was about a PC68LTX, same pll inside. I would recommend sending the reference data only on startup, leaving just the divider data being clocked on key down/up events. The data clock in the PC68 was running at 350kHz.