> Recently, TenTec announced the end of the Pegasus after only about 4.5
> years of production (the radio was introduced at the 1999 Dayton
> Hamvention, but wasn't in production until August or so). I suspect
> that we will see no more firmware updates for the Pegasus. Last year,
> the only firmware update for the Pegasus was to give us access to 60m,
> something that the N4PY software already did without the update. There
> have been essentially no new features for almost 2 years, meaning that
> we really only had updates for about 2.5 years - no where near 10
> years.
>
> I'm not faulting TenTec in this decision. You can't really expect them
> to continuually pour engineering resources into a project without a
> corresponding revenue stream. Now that TT has ceased support for the
> Pegasus, I hope that they will release the firmware source code to the
> general ham public. I'm sure folks like Carl could add new features.
Chances are they won't.
IMO what their fear would be is that someone will hack the software badly
and it will be a problem to resolve. I'm sure Ten-Tec would appreciate the
revinue these factory repairs would bring but it might well present a bad
image if years of future aftermarket sales of hacked Pegasusi led to
operational failures from poorly hacked software. If Ten-Tec service would
be unable to assist the owner with a known solutions, this would likely lead
to a lack of respect and future sales of Ten-Tec products.
It would be nice if Ten-Tec consigned with someone capable of doing the
modifications and then return the hack to Ten-Tec for their approval &
provide that to the public. That would take up very little of Ten-Tec's
resources.
Gary
Gary Smith
CQ DX de KA1J
http://musician.dyndns.org
http://musician.dyndns.org.homebrew.html
" For 37 years I've practiced for 14 hours a day
And now they call me a genius"
- Pablo de Sarasate
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