[TenTec] Orion bug video AND important information from ON6CV

[Jason Buchanan]

Eric SENSI wrote:

>I started making some contacts (finally !) and from time to time, I pushed
>the "send 1" or "send 2" regarding the situation and the radio NEVER fails !
>  
>

I'm not surprised a bit at your success - I work for a company that 
develops software and I have to experience situations like the one you 
described.  Many times you can follow the same steps and nothing seems 
to change but by tweaking the order or the path just a little bit things 
magically start working.  My guess is that when you performed a few 
master resets to erase as much "residue" of the previous version, you 
cleaned out a small chunk of memory somewhere that needed to be 
completely erased.  This could be an indicator that the software itself 
is fine but the firmware flashing program that is supposed to erase the 
memory before writing the new firmware could be flawed.

Software manufacturing is done today on a scale that is prohibitive of 
recursion testing that was possible 30 years ago.  NASA is a good 
example of skipping tests in the interests of getting things out the 
door on time.  Years ago, we put men on the moon using slide rules and 
pencils  -  today we have computers which can process billions of 
equations saving millions of man-hours but because those man-hours were 
saved (and thereby an engineer did not monitor each calculation made) 
things slip through the cracks - the level of qualitative testing is 
essentially eliminated because we rely on the computer instead of 
inspecting everything by hand.  And remember, what you save in labor you 
make up for with time, and what you save in time you make up for with labor.

TenTec obviously is working very hard to develop the firmware for the 
Orion - perhaps the level of desire to rush the previous version out the 
door exceeded the level of desire to give it a good rigorous testing.  
Perhaps the amount of grumbling over the existing version will give them 
the right signals to delay the release until it really is solid.


I don't know if this explanation will help those of you who have been 
frustrated with your Orion but hopefully it will give you some idea what 
is going on in the world of software development today.  It's very 
difficult and is a relatively thankless job.


And regarding eHam, I believe it is irresponsible on their part to 
prevent going back and editing your review or at least to change the 
rating.  I don't think they're doing anyone a favor by providing a 
"ranking" system - the guy who posted a review right after ON6CV had the 
same complaints but still gave the radio a 5/5.  Makes no sense.  Reader 
beware.


73 Jason N1SU