[TenTec] Fwd: Motorola MC68705P3

Thu Sep 29 14:21:13 PDT 2011

Hi Jerry,

Sorry you had a bad experience with Paul. He is a very talented and trustworthy man and a [ersonal friend.. Without going into any detail, I spoke to him at the TT fest and he has some pressing things on his plate now. Not making excuses but we all have good and bad days. God knows my fuse has been short on many occasions; Just ask my wonderful wife.  
BTW, you can see a pic of Donna my XYL if you pull my call up on QRZ and scroll to the bottom of the page. I really did marry up. Hi.. 

I know where Paul is coming from. Their labor rate is about $65 per hour and it does not take long to eat up a lot of money working on Corsairs. As the Service Manager he has to manage the time of his tech's and can't keep them on projects for long periods of time. Well, I guess he can but then the customers are going to bitch when the invoice has $300 to $400 in labor fees.  Not to mention that they try to service about every thing they have made with just a few exceptions and every year that list get's longer. The other issue is they have to have talent in many arenas. RF, Audio, Digital, TTL, regular Solid State, Dip, SMT and point to point wiring technologies. It is hard to find people who are decent in all areas and he probably does well to keep that kind of talent in house. 
Honestly, Paul does a pretty good job keeping it all together and putting up with us cranky hams.. Hi Hi

I think the future of the Corsair rigs is bright for those of us in particular who can do some of the repair work. Often, if I am talking to a client who knows which end of a soldering iron to hold, I'll get him to do some of the work before he ships an item in. In some cases, cleaning connectors with DeOxit or doing some simple test will either resolve the problem or give enough information to get started once the unit comes in for repair.
At least the owner will become a little more knowledgeable of his unit before it's shipped in for repairs.

Ten Tec use to be real good about sending out boards for guys to swap out and then let them send the defective board back. Back in the 80's I dealt with Larry Worth before Paul took over the Service department and on several occasions  He sent parts to me without any charge, the honor system. If that resolved the problem I would send in the old part and in a week or three, I would receive a very modest bill for the part.

Now with the boards being more expensive and sensitive to static damage, I suspect Ten Tec would rather the average Ham send his unit in for service. 

With regard to the MC68705P3 I bought 100 of them for a dollar each. The guy I bought them from has a burner for those that he trying to find to ship to me. However, this chip is not like an EPROM where you can easily read an IC store the code in a file and burn a new one; the code is tricky do catch. There is at least one fellow who figured out a process. I hope to get the burner and figure a way to get a file with the code so I can burn new code. But that's another project. 

If there is anyone on the list who is familiar with reading these IC's I would enjoy learning the technique. 

73,
Glenn WA4AOS
DSM Labs (dot com)

-----Original Message-----
From: Jerry Haigwood <jerry at w5jh.net>
To: 'Glenn' <wa4aos at aol.com>
Sent: Thu, Sep 29, 2011 12:28 pm
Subject: Motorola MC68705P3

Glenn,
     Earlier this week, I spoke with Paul the manager of Ten-Tec’s service department about the new Corsair II Display Logic Board.  He was not interested in it.  First he stated that he never sees any Corsairs II that have a failed U10 (MC68705P3) so he didn’t see the need for it.  He also stated that he doesn’t believe the Corsair IIs are worth saving or even working on.  He states that since they are 25 years old that the heating and cooling over the years have probably deteriorated the solder joints bad enough that they are probably failing.  He also said that the band switch is probably shot by now.  I questioned him about why Ten-Tec doesn’t buy more MC69705P3 controllers.  He said he can’t find them.  So, I told him I know of a person that recently purchased a number of them but didn’t have a way to program them.  He says that they (Ten-Tec) could still program them but since the part is not available it is not worth the effort looking (again Mr. Negative!).
    Glenn, Paul was as negative a person as I have ever spoken with.  His attitude does not make me want to buy anything new from Ten-Tec.  He was down on everything I had to say about the Corsair II.  I know you guys think Ten-Tec is the greatest company in the world but you could not prove it by me.  If you know Paul maybe you can convince him to program the MC68705P3s you have.  If not, at least he may give you a copy of the HEX file so you can do it yourself.  It is obvious Ten-Tec doesn’t really care about the Corsair II.
Jerry W5JH

-----Original Message-----
From: Glenn <wa4aos at aol.com>
To: jerry <jerry at w5jh.net>
Sent: Thu, Sep 29, 2011 1:14 pm
Subject: Re: Motorola MC68705P3

Hi Jerry,

Sorry you had a bad experience with Paul. He is a very talented and trustworthy man and a [ersonal friend.. Without going into any detail, I spoke to him at the TT fest and he has some pressing things on his plate now. Not making excuses but we all have good and bad days. God knows my fuse has been short on many occasions; Just ask my wonderful wife.  
BTW, you can see a pic of Donna my XYL if you pull my call up on QRZ and scroll to the bottom of the page. I really did marry up. Hi.. 

I know where Paul is coming from. Their labor rate is about $65 per hour and it does not take long to eat up a lot of money working on Corsairs. As the Service Manager he has to manage the time of his tech's and can't keep them on projects for long periods of time. Well, I guess he can but then the customers are going to bitch when the invoice has $300 to $400 in labor fees.  Not to mention that they try to service about every thing they have made with just a few exceptions and every year that list get's longer. The other issue is they have to have talent in many arenas. RF, Audio, Digital, TTL, regular Solid State, Dip, SMT and point to point wiring technologies. It is hard to find people who are decent in all areas and he probably does well to keep that kind of talent in house. 
Honestly, Paul does a pretty good job keeping it all together and putting up with us cranky hams.. Hi Hi

I think the future of the Corsair rigs is bright for those of us in particular who can do some of the repair work. Often, if I am talking to a client who knows which end of a soldering iron to hold, I'll get him to do some of the work before he ships an item in. In some cases, cleaning connectors with DeOxit or doing some simple test will either resolve the problem or give enough information to get started once the unit comes in for repair.
At least the owner will become a little more knowledgeable of his unit before it's shipped in for repairs.

Ten Tec use to be real good about sending out boards for guys to swap out and then let them send the defective board back. Back in the 80's I dealt with Larry Worth before Paul took over the Service department and on several occasions  He sent parts to me without any charge, the honor system. If that resolved the problem I would send in the old part and in a week or three, I would receive a very modest bill for the part.

Now with the boards being more expensive and sensitive to static damage, I suspect Ten Tec would rather the average Ham send his unit in for service. 

With regard to the MC68705P3 I bought 100 of them for a dollar each. The guy I bought them from has a burner for those that he trying to find to ship to me. However, this chip is not like an EPROM where you can easily read an IC store the code in a file and burn a new one; the code is tricky do catch. There is at least one fellow who figured out a process. I hope to get the burner and figure a way to get a file with the code so I can burn new code. But that's another project. 

If there is anyone on the list who is familiar with reading these IC's I would enjoy learning the technique. 

73,
Glenn WA4AOS
DSM Labs (dot com)

-----Original Message-----
From: Jerry Haigwood <jerry at w5jh.net>
To: 'Glenn' <wa4aos at aol.com>
Sent: Thu, Sep 29, 2011 12:28 pm
Subject: Motorola MC68705P3

Glenn,
     Earlier this week, I spoke with Paul the manager of Ten-Tec’s service department about the new Corsair II Display Logic Board.  He was not interested in it.  First he stated that he never sees any Corsairs II that have a failed U10 (MC68705P3) so he didn’t see the need for it.  He also stated that he doesn’t believe the Corsair IIs are worth saving or even working on.  He states that since they are 25 years old that the heating and cooling over the years have probably deteriorated the solder joints bad enough that they are probably failing.  He also said that the band switch is probably shot by now.  I questioned him about why Ten-Tec doesn’t buy more MC69705P3 controllers.  He said he can’t find them.  So, I told him I know of a person that recently purchased a number of them but didn’t have a way to program them.  He says that they (Ten-Tec) could still program them but since the part is not available it is not worth the effort looking (again Mr. Negative!).
    Glenn, Paul was as negative a person as I have ever spoken with.  His attitude does not make me want to buy anything new from Ten-Tec.  He was down on everything I had to say about the Corsair II.  I know you guys think Ten-Tec is the greatest company in the world but you could not prove it by me.  If you know Paul maybe you can convince him to program the MC68705P3s you have.  If not, at least he may give you a copy of the HEX file so you can do it yourself.  It is obvious Ten-Tec doesn’t really care about the Corsair II.
Jerry W5JH