Adding a Status Display Card to the MSR2000

Design and Implementation by Henry Wingate K4HAL (k4hal at arrl dot net)
Photos by Hop Hays K4TQR
Text and HTML by Mike Morris WA6ILQ

If you read the conversion article by K4HAL you will notice that he pulls almost all the cards from the card cage and connects his repeater controller to a pigtail cable that conencts to pins on the backplane.   As such, the Squelch Gate card slot is empty.

Well, Henry created a piece of test equipment that may be useful to you. He took a timeout timer card and stripped the components from it, drilled holes in the front for the LEDs and wired them to a few resistors and to the pins on the card.   As he says, "Really messy, but it is kind of useful to tell what is going on".   He has LEDs for DC power, Carrier (COR), PTT, and PL decode.

If you convert your MSR and end up using the Squelch Gate card, the same fuctionality could be implemented on the squelch gate card itself using the information and schematic below.   To save space on the squelch gate front panel you could locate the DC Power and PTT LEDs on the Station Control card (thanks to WA6KLA for the suggestion).

But enough digression - the photos are all you will need to duplicate Henry's test card.   The photos are thumbnails, click on any of them for a full size image.

The card cage with the display card in the squelch gate slot (81kb)

The component side of the display card (98kb)

The foil side (93kb)

The schematic (76kb)

Technical work by Henry Wingate K4HAL (k4hal at arrl dot net)
HTML and all text by Mike Morris WA6ILQ
Photos by Hop Hays K4TQR
Last modified 12 September 2003

Note from WA6ILQ:
If you see something above that is vague, missing (or outright wrong), please let me know!   It's input from the readers that make these writeups better.   I can be reached via either an email or snail mail address that is available via the qrz web site.

(I've included the QRZ link above instead of my real snail mail and email address since my first household move in over 25 years is coming up, and modifying all the web pages at my own schedule over six months saves having to update a lot of web pages at once).