AB7YF wrote:
1) the DragonBall processor used by the Orion has been EOL'd
(discontinued) by Freescale/Motorola. Does this imply that TT will be
upgrading the Orion to another processor when their supply of
DragonBall's runs out? or does it mean that an Orion+ or Orion II is on
the horizon?
2) From what I've read about Orion it has the potential of being a
truly awesome rig, but given the somewhat unstable nature of it's
firmware etc. can it truly live up to it's potential in it's present
incarnation? or will a hardware upgrade(s) be necessary to fix all of
the little nits?
Harry, from what I understand of the objectives of
the forthcoming version 2.0 firmware upgrade, it should
address problems caused by internal communications between
the main CPU and the two DSP processors. These communications
problems have apparently been the cause of instability in some
functions (random lockups, CW signal timebase jitter, etc) and
I doubt these problems were caused by an underpowered CPU. I
have no idea about the support life of the DragonBall is but
it is likely years (maybe even decades) and not days or months.
End-of-Life happens all the time in industry and yet the world
still somehow manages to turn.
If you want a perfect rig, you will need to wait
until you go where George W5YR (SK) recently went. Orion
already IS an awesome rig, especially its strong-signal handling
as consistently measured by ARRL, RSGB, W8JI and Sherwood.
73, Bill W4ZV
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