[TenTec] WAS: Omni 6 Logic board failure

[Dr. Gerald N. Johnson]

On 1/19/2011 12:24 PM, NL7VL wrote:
> Ron,
>
>> <SNIP>
> Many of us could kludge a daughter-board arrangement as a fix, but as
> Geoff, N3OWJ pointed out, the costs of board development are
> prohibitive - even to Ten-Tec.
>
Actually there are commercially available boards for connecting surface 
mount parts to DIP PC boards, one IC at a time. That works a lot of the 
time because the makers didn't change the number of pins or the ordering 
of the pins when shrinking the part.

TenTec should have the inside run on a board replacement, with knowledge 
of all the detailed board functions and how it interacts to control the 
radio. A big part of someone else making a board replacement involves 
learning ALL of those. I'm sure that if I got that intimate with the 
radio that my replacement would work differently, that it would go to 
USB for CW, instead of LSB. And that might require changing the BFO 
alignment or a crystal or the BFO crystal switching logic.

I've already posted my list of things that are not hard to check and 
that have caused problems in other radios, domestic and imported. 
There's nothing about the Omni VI that makes it above any of those 
common failure modes that I know of. I rather doubt beyond those that 
there are any common modes of Omni VI control board failure, but I don't 
know and I don't have a collection of failed radios to know. It would 
take such a collection and at least one good radio to build up history. 
That's easy at Tentec, hard every where else. I'd bet back in some 
spiderwebbed corner, Tentec has a test jig to test every control board 
before installing it into a radio. That would be key to profitably 
making a new board or depot repairing old boards. Some sort of test bed 
that runs the board through all its input possibilities and looks for 
the correct outputs quicker than testing all its capabilities inside a 
working radio.

73, Jerry, K0CQ