VDO CDR 500 "95 Safe"

[diskwipe]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to this forum and this is my first post.

Somebody, somewhere MUST know what "95 SAFE" means on a '51 plate Vectra's display. Had to change the battery and now the CDR 500 doesn't work. When you power on, the display indicates "SAFE", so I followed the procedure (from a downloaded user manual) to enter the code. When I press the AS button, the word "Safe" on the display is preceded by the number 95 and there is no 'beep' nor any 'dashes' where the code might be entered. Tried leaving the unit powered up for 1 hour - with "95 SAFE" on the display - but still no joy. Does this mean the unit is now locked??

When I tried Googling "CDR 500 95 SAFE", there were many hits in Polish, but only 1 in English (on this forum) with no solution, apart from a recommendation to leave the unit powered on overnight using a spare battery. According to the manual, the word "Safe" can only be preceded by the numbers 10 through (presumably) 0 - if someone has used up all 10 tries at the correct code. However, the user manual doesn't say what is displayed if the unit is locked. I thought it would be something like "LCKD" - does anyone know??

It's all very frustrating so any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

[RegWorts]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to this forum and this is my first post.

Somebody, somewhere MUST know what "95 SAFE" means on a '51 plate Vectra's display. Had to change the battery and now the CDR 500 doesn't work. When you power on, the display indicates "SAFE", so I followed the procedure (from a downloaded user manual) to enter the code. When I press the AS button, the word "Safe" on the display is preceded by the number 95 and there is no 'beep' nor any 'dashes' where the code might be entered. Tried leaving the unit powered up for 1 hour - with "95 SAFE" on the display - but still no joy. Does this mean the unit is now locked??

When I tried Googling "CDR 500 95 SAFE", there were many hits in Polish, but only 1 in English (on this forum) with no solution, apart from a recommendation to leave the unit powered on overnight using a spare battery. According to the manual, the word "Safe" can only be preceded by the numbers 10 through (presumably) 0 - if someone has used up all 10 tries at the correct code. However, the user manual doesn't say what is displayed if the unit is locked. I thought it would be something like "LCKD" - does anyone know??

It's all very frustrating so any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

Leaving it ON for just an hour will not necessarily reset it if many wrong codes have been entered as basically the waiting time doubles after each wrong code.

Usually, with these radios , the longest you may have to wait with it SWITCHED ON ..UNDISTURBED may be 640 minutes (nearly 11 hours) ...the important word is UNDISTURBED because if interrupted, then the waiting time starts all over again.
.(On some makes of radio the waiting time can be as long as 24 hours or more r !)

I`ve never seen 95 SAFE before so until you`ve tried the previous answer (by leaving overnight..or longer ) then we cannot really suggest anything else.

Please post back here with any results.

If it doesn`t work, then it will have to be taken into a Radio Decoding Service to be reset.

[diskwipe]

Thanks for your reply, Regworts. I have a spare battery and can discover what connector the voltage is on by using a multimeter, so I'll try your suggestion.

However, since the manual makes no mention of 95 SAFE, I'm thinking the radio may be faulty or, perhaps, the eprom data has become corrupted - in which case, your 'Radio Decoding Service' might be the best bet. I'll post back with the results.

Thanks again for your interest and comment.