K7HIO.NET

All of the pagers we're using are "previously loved", which means that some of them are a little flaky when being programmed.  The programming cable is designed with two tall spring-loaded pins that need to enter holes on the pack of the pager to hit the programming contacts inside.  Some of the pagers seem to have no problem with this, with others the pins only occasionally make proper contact.  When this happens, we see the following message from the programming software:

I took one of the units apart and noticed that there is a thick rubber gasket with holes that the pins must slide through to make contact with the main board.  After years of being programmed, this gasket is in pretty bad shape and thus undoubtedly isn't letting the pins slide effortlessly through.

To remedy this, I simply cut the gasket almost in half and found that the holes inside are tapered, which leaves the remaining bit of gasket with wider holes.

After reassembling the pager and putting it back in the cradle, it worked immediately: