[TenTec] Orion2 Firmware Update

[Rsoifer at aol.com]

I am the furthest thing from an IT professional; those of you who know me  
personally will know how true that is.  Still, in a prior life, when I  
worked in the banking industry, I was put into the role of user manager of  
several highly complex systems (commercial loan, daily/monthly profitability,  
etc.) that were in need of re-work.
 
>From that experience, I remember how difficult it was to get our arms  
around systems with high legacy content, past turnover of  
designers/analysts/programmers, and extensive interaction with other  systems.  Does that sound 
familiar?  
 
The possible saving grace in the O II situation might be that we are  
"only" dealing with 10K lines of code, rather than millions in the banking  
situation.  Rather than trying to fix the existing firmware, might it  make more 
sense just to treat the O II as an  empty hardware platform, and  write an 
altogether new system?
 
I don't claim to know the answer.  All I can do is ask.
 
73 Ray W2RS
 
 In a message dated 4/15/2010 2:36:14 P.M. GMT Standard Time,  
jmiller1706 at cfl.rr.com writes:
 

I'm  going to give the benefit of the doubt now.  Could be a number of 
things  other than inadequate testing before release.  

I am wondering if  the firmware is finding some uninitialized residual 
parameter data in our O2's  that isn't in the test radio they have that's 
causing our loads to go  crazy?  I assume a power reset should clear memory 
completely but maybe  not?  Some data values got relocated in flash memory and 
when you load it  into our radios there is some uncleared data that's hosing 
things?

Are  they trying to make the software work for both the O2 and the other 
radio  (Jupiter?).  Maybe it works fine for the other one but not the  O2?

If it is indeed poor quality control and testing, then that needs  to be 
cleaned up.  If TT does work for the government/defense, they  should know 
that rigorous, meticulous testing is normally required by the DoD,  sometimes 
taking weeks and months to complete.  Some of that discipline  should carry 
over to their commercial products.

And someone commented  that it takes a good hot-shot programmer.  Yes 
that's partly true, but  with software-defined radio technology, it almost takes 
PhD level  theoretical/math understanding of digital signal processing 
concepts.   Then be able to translate that to firmware.  But in reality it takes  
many:  A math/DSP guru, a hot shot coder but one who has discipline to  
craft good code, and then a good independent test team to wring out the  bugs.

I notice that the download appears to be reposted on the TT  page...back to 
the previous version?

73 Good luck - Jim  N4BE
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