John,
That memory chip has a battery built right into the chip.
The Omni V battery has nothing to do with this. The battery
inside the chip has a 10 year life. When it goes bad, it is time to replace
the chip. But the chips you bought a long time ago also have a battery
in them. They have a 10 year life whether the chip is used or not.
You are correct about the similarity between the chip in the auto tuner
and the Omni V. Maybe the chips you bought were made at a much
later date than the Omni V memory chip. Anyway, it's not use
that messes up the chip, it is the internal chip battery shelf life.
73,
Carl Moreschi N4PY
Franklinton, NC
----- Original Message -----
From: "JA Crux" <JAC@patents.freeserve.co.uk>
To: <tentec@contesting.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 10, 2002 5:24 PM
Subject: [TenTec] OMNI-V v9 Memory bank
>
> My Omni-V (updated to v.9 firmware) has been in continuous use for years.
I
> have replaced the lithium keep-alive battery B1 and its probably due a new
> battery by now, but will that solve my immediate problem ?? Read on ....
>
> The memories are now virtually all full of sheer garbage. But is a battery
> swap enough to fix this ?? According to the manual, memory info is stored
in
> U8, an X2404 non-volatile RAM chip. Changing the battery, or resetting the
> CPU apparently does NOT affect the contents of that chip. And even if it
did,
> there may still be a problem ... see below.
>
> Now exactly the same chip is used in the 253 auto tuner (with no
keep-alive
> battery) where it very definitely has a finite life cycle before it
becomes
> unusable (i.e. full of garbage that cannot be over-written.) Thats why I
> bought a pack of ten spare X2404s from a trade outlet because getting them
> one at a time was a real pain in the butt (and pocketbook.) As it was,
they
> had to be imported specially from the US for me.
>
> Commonsense suggests that U8 in the Omni-V is equally vulnerable to the
> ravages of time and repeated rewriting.
>
> Question: has anyone out there had this "memory full of garbage" problem
and
> had to swap U8 ?? No mention of it in the manual for either the Omni or
the
> 253. I'd hate to have to drag the Omni out of of the rack twice when I
could
> fix it at the first go.
>
> 73 John G3JAG
>
>
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