I would think that a lot of the patents would be running out soon as if that would make any difference.
On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 11:14 PM, Poul-Henning Kamp <[email protected]> wrote: > -------- > In message > <db3pr05mb171eddfb1237019d474778b95...@db3pr05mb171.eurprd05.prod.ou > tlook.com>, Alan Ambrose writes: > > >>Come on, we all know how this will end... a raspberry-pi like > >>processor running a virtual machine emulating the original processor > >>(running the same firmware) and taking care of everything digital, > >>and the analog asics doing what they do best.... HP48 style. > > > >Daniel, that made me laugh :). Begs a question though - even if > >Agilent or whoever they are called today don't have the smart > >personnel or the market incentive to do a good job of bringing the > >whole thing up-to-date, they could add a better display, better > >connectivity, more stats, smaller packaging, more modern components > >etc and leave the clever analogue stuff alone. Sooner or later, > >someone is going to want to move the start of the art forward from > >the late 1980's. > > In the HP3458A the cleverness is not just in the analogue stuff. > There is no way you could do something like that without stepping > over HP's software copyright. > > You can probably get away with a FOSS project, provided you do it > in a way where people extract the necessary bits from their own > meter (using GPIB), but there is no way you can (legally) do it as > a commercial project. > > That said, there are *so* many interesting things you could do with > that meter with improved software... > > -- > Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 > [email protected] | TCP/IP since RFC 956 > FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe > Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. > _______________________________________________ > volt-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe, go to > https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volt-nuts > and follow the instructions there. > -- *John Phillips* _______________________________________________ volt-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volt-nuts and follow the instructions there.
