On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 1:54 PM, Julian, G4ILO <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I was really more concerned with what support there will be for the current > generation of SDR radios in, say 10 years time. If the PC that runs the > current software dies, and you can't get a new PC that runs XP (or whatever > you need to run that SDR software) what guarantee do you have that any > software that runs on Windows 2020 or whatever will support the 10 year old > box. The manufacturer (if they are still around) will probably have no > interest in supporting obsolete products. This is one of the arguments in favor of the open source model. If the manufacturer of hardware that uses proprietary software/firmware goes away, you are pretty much stuck with whatever the last release was before the manufacturer went belly up. If the software/firmware is open source, the hardware can still be supported long after the manufacturer has gone. Of course if you can't do the software/firmware yourself, it is a little less convincing argument at face value but you always still have the option to pay or barter for a software developer to make the changes or fix the bugs that you want. With interfaces such as USB (the new upcoming USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 and USB 1.1) or Ethernet, support for those interfaces in the PCs should be around through multiple versions of Windows/Linux/OS?. 73 Phil N8VB -- Phil Covington Software Radio Laboratory LLC Columbus, Ohio http://www.srl-llc.com _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
