Im guessing it could still listen just not talk back
Edit read the article
Although the radio signal from the spacecraft had never ceased its connection to ground control operators on Earth during the computer problem, that signal had not carried any usable data since
Wait how did they do all that WITHOUT contact?
The problem was that Voyager sent junk data back to us due to a memory fault. It was still responsive to receive updates from Earth and to pings.
Pinging Voyager 1 takes about 2 days, so testing updates is naturally quite slow.
Not only round trip time, the hardware only supports bandwidth of 160bps at this range. Down from the 21.6kbps at launch.
Im guessing it could still listen just not talk back
Edit read the article
This Satelite must offer option to install software updates over the air, so they modified software and slowly uploaded it to the satelite.