--- Tommy <aldermant@alltel.net> wrote:
> The 'futuristic thinkers' line is interesting. But
> I've always wondered how one can be a 'futuristic
> thinker' if they don't know anything about the
> past? Maybe instead of being a 'futuristic thinker'
> you really meant a ' reinvent the wheel thinker'?
I do indeed point out the importance of understanding
the historical perspective and specifically made that
point in my previous post. As for "reinvent the wheel"
no, not at all. Sure much of what I've writen about
for user interfaces in my posts in the past have been
done before in the mil and commercial arena. But they
took 10's of thousands if not 100's of thousands of
dollars to achieve, today it can be done for less than
the cost of the Orion. The technology to do so is not
that exotic anymore or expensive, it just needs to
applied.
> The cry for open source firmware is also very
> interesting. Can't you just visualize hundreds of
> wanna-be-ham-programmers sitting in front of their
> Orion, writting code, with their 'Programming For
> Dummies' book in their lap, (and hams ARE going to
> do this because they LOVE to tinker). Let's say the
> wanna-be-programmer writes some fantastic code to
> make the receiver more sensitive. (And you CAN do
> this, because software is the answer to everything,
> you know) When the wanna-be-programmer loads his
> code into the Orion, reboots, and the receiver is
> dead! NOW WHAT? Oppps, there is no troubleshooting
> procedure in the Programming For Dummies book that
> shows you how to fix a dead receiver...so of course
> the first thing you want to do is call Ten Tec and
> yell to Paul Clinton "YOUR radio is broken, can you
> fix it?". If I were Ten Tec my response would be
> "Certainly we can do that, we charge only $800 bucks
> per hour for troubleshooting your firmware. If we
> find your receiver to be dead with your code, but
> works fine with our original code, we charge a flat
> $800 bucks for testing". Or are you proposing that
> Ten Tec be available to troubleshoot your well
> written, error free code, for you?
I surely wouldn't, that is why in one of my other
recent post I suggest the idea of TT selecting a
carefully chosen few 3rd parties to take on the task
of updating firmware for the now older radios. Bottom
line TT needs to maintain tight control as Scott made
clear in his recent post about this topic. And for the
rabid tinkerer of DSP code the Flex Radio SDR-1000
meets that groups needs quite handily, and no it is
not for everybody, and that's fine too. As for
increasing sensitivty via firmware it is partially
true ONLY to the extent of what the more tradiotnal
ANALOG stages pass down to the DSP IF to work with.
That's essentially what TT is providing with the
programable AGC of the Orion. However as I've said
many times before the DSP IF cannot undo the damage
done in the analog stages that preceed it, there's
nothing mysterious about that. TT without doubt grasps
that concept or they wouldn't have put the effort they
did into analog RF/IF stages of the Orion.
> Since software is the answer to all problems, for
> 'futuristic thinkers' that is, while suggesting Ten
> Tec release the source code for their rigs, why not
> also suggest Ten Tec get rid of all of their circuit
> design engineers and replace them with a software
> engineering group? Heck, the state-of-the-art in
> circuit design has already been maxed out so there
> surely is no further requirement to develop
> 'futuristic' old analog receiver and transmitter
> circuit designs. Or maybe you really can develop a
> receiver with a 0.18 microvolt sensivity with just
> software...where's my Programming for Dummies book?
> Can you really get a digital circuit to switch with
> better than about a 50dB on/off ratio? Hmmmm...some
> old codger once had the brass to tell me that with
> those ancient old analog filters that they could
> sometimes even achieve 90dB ultimate rejection. Why
> doesn't my Programming For Dummies book tell me how
> to write code that will achieve even better than
> that?
Again it is the analog hardware that ultimately sets
the performance limits of a DSP IF radio. What my
contention is that the technology and components to
provide the great analog RF performance that everybody
wants are now simply commodities, and have been for a
few decades already. The knowledge of how to apply
them has been around for decades as well, it's just
that the manufacturers by and large decided not to for
whatever reasons for so long. Much of the code to make
a truly great ham transciever however is NOT a
commoditity, so that is where our push into the future
should be focused. Believe it or not for some styles
of operation the traditional radio panel that we are
all familiar with is not always the best way to
operate a radio, that is where the non traditional
approach to thinking about things can pay big
dividends.
I'm the first to agree that there's not much point in
doing what has already been done for years in software
that can be done by simpler traditional means. All
that happens in that case is people complain about how
the "new" software driven tradtional radio "emulation"
isn't quite like their old analog design. So why waste
time trying to emulate old ideas in software when you
can better use that new technology to do what HASN'T
been done before?
As for the dynamic range of a a DSP IF system, it is
set by the A to D's bit resolution and noise
performance. TT has wisely managed the signal levels
fed to those stages by careful analog circuit design
ahead of them.
> I think to be a 'futuristic thinker' you must know
> all there is to know about the past.
Agree 100%.
Duane
N9DG
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