No Aircraft
Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Air Traffic Control Time Certified In Pos 1 (yrs) 13
Confusion; Communication Breakdown; Troubleshooting
ATC Issue All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
ATC Equipment / Nav Facility / Buildings; Human Factors; Procedure
After an overnight RADAR outage; maintenance had been working to restore RADAR all morning.  When maintenance requested to switch off of CENRAP; I turned our CENRAP trigger switch to the OFF (normal) position.  At that time; all ARTS data disappeared and the controller working RADAR was unable to make the ARTS entry to disable CENRAP leaving us with a blank scope.  Returning the switch to the ON position regained ARTS data; but an entry to inhibit CENRAP was still unsuccessful.  Several changes were made in the equipment room the past several weeks to facilitate installation of STARS eLITE.  Apparently one of those changes caused the CENRAP switch to interact with ARTS.  Maintenance personnel failed to realize the magnitude of the changes made and their effect on other systems.  Air Traffic was then unaware of the change in function of the switch and the result was a complete outage of RADAR presentation to controllers.
EVV FLM reports of a situation when maintenance is returning RADAR equipment back into service and the ARTS equipment doesn't work correctly.