John and Carter touch upon one of my pet peeves about modern circuitry.
Things like logic boards often get discontinued through no fault of the
board manufacturer.
Instead, the logic chips, especially if they are ROM programmed, or
special logic functions; often become obsolete because some other vendor
comes along with a chip that does the job of the special chip and
several more. The process may have changed to more profitable thin
trace high density or surface mount circuits, or even the logic families
preferred by designers might shift from 5 volt parts to 3 volt parts or
less. Anything with "logic" in the board name might well be unobtanium
shortly after a model goes out of production.
If you truly love your rig and want to keep it working for the rest of
your life, you do shop the net for the chips, and hope that you can get
them programmed by the rig manufacturer. Some riceboxes like the ICOM
751 suffer from one of a kind logic chips that are no longer available.
Or, you take the plunge and buy a second working rig for the parts it
might donate to keeping your favorite model going indefinitely. Also,
with the change over to ROHS parts, (lead free in Europe and the rest of
the world), it is already getting hard to get leaded parts rather than
surface mount, and conventional parts that will solder well with
traditional tin lead solders.
By all means baby your favorite rigs by not leaving them plugged into an
antenna panel or antenna nor into the power line when you are not using
your station. You don't want to lose a classic rig to a power surge or
lightning hit.
-Stuart Rohre
K5KVH
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