Any product is obsolete when it stops working and cannot readily be
repaired. The Hercules I with a blown output device is a prime
example of that. I own three Titan 425s and a Hercules II. I can
afford to own these nearly 30 year old products because they
reasonably well designed, are practical to work on myself, and are
utilize parts that I can find at low cost.
A software/firmware based product is obsolete for the same reasons
-- say it gets hit by lightning and the chips are no longer
available. Or maybe the board is fried and the stock of spare
boards is gone. I think I recall a post not many months ago where
something like this happened to someone with a TenTec product. It
might happen when you need a new copy of the firmware and the
company has gone away. I've seen product support dry up when the
one guy in a small company who understands it dies, retires, or
moves elsewhere.
Even the best mfrs get hit with key parts being discontinued. The
mfr of a chip that was very widely used in pro audio gear
experienced catastrophic failure of the dies used to make those
chips, and the cost to replace them was so high that they
discontinued the chip instead. That left LOTS of equipment mfrs
high and dry, just as Motorola did when the discontinued the output
devices for the Herc I.
Today's software-based and DSP-based radios offer FAR more features
and often better performance at a price point that would be
unbelievable 20 years ago. I don't know details about the Orions,
but know they have lots of neat features built in that you would
have to add outboard devices to achieve with an older radio. The
new K3 is probably their closest competitor, and I do have one of
them. It has separate graphic equalizers for both transmit and
receive audio, and great dynamics processing to make your audio
crisp, clean, and competitive. It has circuitry to detect CW keying
and PTT on pins 4 and 7 of their serial port -- all it takes to
contest with this radio is a straight thru serial cable. No
external boxes. It has more options for IF filtering, noise
blanking, and noise reduction than you can shake a stick at. And it
can send and receive RTTY and PSK that you input from your paddle
and display it on the LED display. I'm sure that the Orions do many
of these things, and some others I haven't mentioned.
Yes, they're still tweaking the firmware to make it work better and
add features. But with a hardware-only radio, adding those features
and fine-tuning that performance level stopped six months before
the first units went out the door! You want more, you wait years to
buy the A model (and sell the old one).
And when you're thinking about the price of your 20 year old radio,
don't forget to factor in 20 years worth of inflation at 4%/yr.
That's 2.2X, or $4,400 in today's dollars for a radio that cost you
$2,000 in 1988.
>From where I sit, it looks like both TenTec and Elecraft learned
from the original Orion's teething problems. I haven't heard nearly
the screaming about the Orion II that I heard about the Orion. And
Elecraft pumped out Beta product to a limited number highly
qualified operators and engineers before it hit the street.
Sure, small companies like Ten Tec and Elecraft are highly
dependent on a handful of key people. I dunno about Ten Tec, by
Elecraft is down the road from me about 20 miles, so I do know a
bit about some of them. From where I sit, both companies appear to
be run by experienced and mature businessmen, and I'd be surprised
if they haven't thought about "succession" -- that is, what happens
if someone key to the operation dies.
Bottom line -- I'll take a software/firmware based radio any day!
The most important thing is buying one from a great company.
73,
Jim Brown K9YC
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