Jim, Ten Tec released the Omni VI+ and announced the availability of the
various options for the Omni VI series at the same time. I bought a VI+ for
evaluation and then had my two VI's upgraded to Option 3 within a few weeks
after
delivery of the Plus. The QST reviews of the Omni VI and + were very fast -
within two or three months of the initial announcement. Check the ARRL web
pages
for announcement dates.
As far as the Dragonball is concerned, I doubt that the processor is given
too many jobs to do. I did notice there will soon, maybe already is, a new
generation of Sharc processors with twice the core speed and integral memory
instead of the piggybacked memory on the current (last?) generation of
processors.
But I suspect most of the Orion's remaining "problems" are fixable in
software, as soon as someone figures out how to do it. The problem is the usual
one,
you "fix" one line of code and everything from that point to the end of the
program has to be tweaked to make it work. And then everything has to be
re-tweaked and tweaked again, and by the time you get the program working to
everyone's satisfaction someone has found something else not to their liking.
So the
process starts all over again.
73 Pete Allen AC5E
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