[Motorola] Surplus Syntor X's on eBay

[Geoff Fors]

Speaking of Syntor X 9000's and Syntor X's, there are many government
surplus VHF high band versions showing up on eBay, invariably without any
accessories.

The majority of these seem to have been used by the FBI, U.S. Marshals, and
other federal law enforcement agencies, originally with a hand-held control
head and assorted DES/DVP encryption options, none of which have survived
with the radios.

In case anyone is interested, here's what I have found so far - - most of
these radios have been "de-milled" by misguided technicians, who have
removed both of the eproms on the personality board, i.e. U501 and U502
under the aluminum shield can.  U501 is a 27128 uv-erased eprom which
contains the radio's firmware, while U502 is a 2816 or 2864 eeprom which
contains the channel programming and other end-user program material.  It's
easy enough to replace U502 with a blank 2816 or 2864, but U501 contains
factory permanent data and at last inquiry cost almost $ 50 from Motorola,
about twice what the X9000 radio drawers are selling for on eBay.  One
solution seems to be to use a prom programmer to create a copy of U501 from
a working radio.  Other ideas are solicited !  In any case, it's worth
bearing this in mind when considering "as-is" or "not tested"  X9000 radio
drawers from sellers who clearly have no experience with this type of
equipment.

As far as Syntor X radios, there are a number of T43 series VHF high band
drawers on eBay which usually sell in the $ 5.00 range, which are surplus
from the City of San Diego and usually still marked as such.  It turns out
that these, in addition to missing the eeprom code plug modules, were
originally configured for use with hand-held control heads and are missing
several interface IC's necessary to use them with any conventional control
heads.  There are also a half dozen jumpers which have to be added or
changed to do this.  The simplest solution is to cannibalize the necessary
IC's from a scrap conventional Syntor X chassis.  These radios work fine
once the jumpers are changed, the hand-held control head board removed,  and
the missing IC's added.

If you have found other anomalies with surplus Syntor X and X9000 radios, I
encourage you to share your experiences here so the rest of us can benefit !

Geoff Fors
WB6NVH