[TenTec] Re: Continuing Orion evaluation/Dragonball

[AC5E at aol.com]

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