SC50 rollover/firmware issue?

[fish2live]

Yesterday I had a very brief conversation with a boat at sea regarding its autopilot issues. The boat has been contacting several people by satphone, and by the time I spoke with the skipper he was under the impression that the heading data from his SC-50 are to blame. He had spoken to a service tech in another town who claimed to be servicing lots GPS problems of a similar nature.

Last week I did some work on another boat with an SC-50 and a very old GP50. I checked the GP50 and found the rollover date problem. At the time it just didn't occur to me to check the SC-50, but I got a call from that boat as soon as it left town, wondering why it wasn't getting a position from the SC-50 into a computer. I assumed that somebody had dislodged a data wire while working under the wheelhouse cabinet, but now I'm starting to wonder what else may have gone wrong.

This makes two boats within a week, both using output from a SC-50, who have had issues to my knowledge. Has the SC-50 been affected by the GPS rollover? If so, what can be done to fix it?

 

[Melville]

The SC-50 was not affected by the latest rollover. You can find the list of the affected products on the factory website, http://www.furuno.com.

 

[fish2live]

I know it isn't on the list, yet I was told yesterday that something had apparently gone wrong with the SC50's data output, used as heading input to an autopilot, and the operator who told me about it had heard something about similar problems cropping up. The operator had heard elsewhere that some sort of software update was needed.

Granted, the details tend to be a bit vague when all this info is relayed through sat phone calls, but something has happened, a technician in another town was aware of it from other reports, and I had my own sat phone inquiry about an SC-50's output in exactly the same time frame. I'm aware of the likelihood of coincidence here, but I'm also aware of the perils in assuming coincidence.

 

[Johnny Electron]

First off, if a unit affected by the rollover is power cycled, it will function perfectly except for the date. This unit isn't on the list nor have we been getting reports of problems. Considering that there are thousands of commercial boats using this unit, I find the thoughts of rollover to be very unlikely. Lastly, this forum is for the Light Marine products. Commercial questions/concerns should be taken directly to the local distributor technical support. DeepSea commercial products are beyond the scope of this forum and will not be discussed here. Thanks for understanding.