Elecraft T1 misbehaving

Equipment
1

I have an Elecraft T1 tuner that doesn’t seem to have any memory of its status: when starting a tuning cycle it doesn’t recall a previous tuning solution from memory, it starts from scratch and takes several seconds to get to what should be a known good LC configuration. Additionally it doesn’t toggle between inline and bypass, it only goes to bypass, the only way to re-engage the tuner is to attempt to go back inline (no green light and no relays clicking) and then start a new tuning cycle.

Did the EEPROM inside the PIC16F876A MCU go read only?

2

It’s possible that the write endurance for the EEPROM has been exceeded but it is the order of 1000000 cycles. i.e. many, many more write cycles than modern MLC flash on disk drives. That’s a lot of tune cycles!

Maybe your PIC has failed prematurely ? But ISTR you can still buy a programmed PIC from Elecraft for about $70US.

3

Possibly? All other functions are unaffected, it tunes impossible loads, it sends its status over RF, it measures forward and reflected power.

4

That, however, is very suspicious :joy: :smiling_face_with_sunglasses: