[TenTec] The future of The Orion I

[A. Sewell]

W. Engelke wrote:

>Still the announcement of a follow-on product was a shock because it seemed to me the Orion was still a pretty new product. Alas that is not the case with electronics. I am a bit concerned about the O1 and its current owners for the follwing reasons:
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>1.  Will V2 really fix timing problems in the O1 chip, since it is a slower processor?
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Per W4PA on 7/21

"The DragonBall processor in the original Orion is up to the task of 
accomodating all the functionality of the transceiver 
itself..........................What I have said before - and will say 
again, is that perhaps wehaven't used the DragonBall to its full 
capability...hence the v2.0 of thefirmware."

>2.  I'd guess that the use of the DragonBall Super VZ for the O2 was made because this chip would have the same instruction set as the original processor, giving an easier implementation of V2.  Very reasonable. But a check of Freescale's web site seems to imply that they are about to discontinue the entire DragonBall line. (See http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=MC68SZ328&nodeId=01J4Fs2973vL2v ). Wow- how about that - the O2's processor is obsolete and possibly discontinued before the first customer-ready O2 is sold.
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Per W4PA on 7/21:

"The reason we were given by Freescale that it's listed as "do not base 
new designs" is because a lead-free solder use replacement part is going 
to be issued. Instead of merely stating that as the reason on the 
website, it's listed as "do not base new designs" without a description 
of why this would be the case. A recent phone call to Freescale from a 
Ten-Tec employee provided the explanation that they hadn't gotten around 
to making the appropriate changes to their website."