Hi Stuart -
Your comments are on the mark. What you are suggesting is exactly the
direction automobile manufacturers have been moving for electrical
connectors. Much of this activity is being led by the USCAR
organization in the US. OEMs are beginning to understand the overall
benefit (economic and engineering system design) of electrical
connector standardization across the OEMs in certain areas or for
particular applications.
However, I think that the accessory market is probably one area that is
lucrative in amateur radio, so part and connection scheme proliferation
plays into that business model.
(To keep this focused on Ten Tec) - I think their approach of keeping
most of the I/O simple and accessible with commonly available (and
available from multiple sources) types of connectors makes sense. If
we could only get the "other" guys to do it like Ten Tec (hihi).
Just my 2 cents.
Steve - N8KOM
On Thursday, September 9, 2004, at 07:04 PM, Stuart Rohre wrote:
Why did it all get off the track? Many years ago, any phone rig had
a two
conductor mike connector that had a screw on shell, and coaxial
contact. In
those days TR was a switch on the transmitter, and receiver to go from
Talk
to listen. There was 1/4 inch phone jack for the key and Headphones
had a
jack too.
On mobile equipment, you had a tip, ring sleeve mike jack, so that you
could
have push to talk activation of a TR relay. That became popular with
early
transceivers as well.
Why did Yaecomwood bring in the multipin connectors that were not
common to
North America?
Of course, partly it was driven by use of Touch Tone mikes on FM rigs,
but
then they added them to HF rigs, and standardization went out the
window.
Perhaps there is good reason to keep the PTT keying leads a separate
pair
from audio ground and thus the 4 pin Ten Tec mike plug makes sense.
But, you can also see that rigs used to have standard 1/4 inch phone
jacks
for headphones and now there are many variations, as rigs have gotten
smaller. Also, you now see the RJ 45 type mike connectors as well as
the 8
pin round on import rigs. Where will it stop? Can hams as a group,
or as
clubs and national societies, establish standards committees and get
all
manufacturers to use common connectors for mike, key, phones, external
speakers, TNC's, Computer control, etc.?
One sad fact is that the computer industry fell down in standards
setting on
connectors and I/O conventions. After many years of the serial port
and
standard RS 232 that could be implemented as full handshake or as a
simple
Transmit, receive, and ground, with loop backs on controls, now we see
the
I/O flavor of the year. We lose the serial, simple interfaces, and
the do
everything parallel interfaces; and you never know which standard will
catch
the fancy of computer designers next month. Is it any wonder some of
us
prefer a radio to be a manually controlled radio only, or have all
modes
built in rather than worrying the configurations of I/O and external
controllers?
The cost of building radios and buying them would come down, for the
features contained, if each maker did not have to buy small quantities
of
connectors rather than buying a mass produced standard connector.
About the
only standard connector still seen is the UHF antenna connection, and
that
is beginning to vary with BNC and N appearing on some equipment. Of
course,
there are good reasons for BNC and N, and maybe those two should win
out for
all uses.
At one time there was a industry group of amateur radio manufacturers,
spearheaded by the editors of radio magazines. After incentive
licensing,
such groups fell by the wayside with the decline of old line
manufacturers
like Hallicrafters, Hammerlund, etc.
I think it is about time to raise a cry to standardize power and input/
output connections and improve the lot of the poor ham trying to tie
several
incompatible, (connector wise) rigs to accessories and other station
equipment.
73,
Stuart
K5KVH
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