[K3] [Elecraft] K3 Obsolete?

[Bill W5WVO]

Well, I just concluded eight-plus years as a senior tech writer at
a major Silicon Valley semiconductor manufacturer, so I know a
little about this phraseology. :-)

"Not recommended for new designs" means:

"We've got a ton of this generation in the bins, so we'll keep
selling them to our big customers and distributors, if they really
want them, until we run out. And that's not going to happen any
time soon. But you know, this generation has always been a little
buggy; some things never quite worked the way we expected. We'll
continue to support it and all its errata and patches because we
have to, but really, we're just not very keen about it any more.
We've got a new, improved, more capable, more expensive generation
out there on the market already, and another two generations
beyond that are already in the development pipeline, so... well,
not to put too fine a point on it, you know, but we'd really
prefer that you buy our newer stuff. You'll find our support for
the new stuff to be much livelier and more enthusiastic."

"Obsolete" means:

"Some of our distributors likely still have a lot of this old
stuff back in their warehouses, so you can still get it. Cheap!
And since nobody ever volunteers to go pawing through our public
website to weed out all the obsolete app notes, you can probably
still find stuff on it if you dig deep enough... But look, we're
not making it any more, and we've shut down all real-time tech
support for it. The engineers who designed it aren't even here
anymore. If you call, our guys won't even talk to you about it.
Basically, you're on your own. Sorry about that."

That's about the gist of it. :-)

Bill W5WVO


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike S" <w8ur at flatsurface.com>
To: "Mark Bayern" <plcmark at gmail.com>
Cc: "Ken_ke2n" <ke2n at cs.com>; <elecraft at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 6:49 PM
Subject: Re: [K3] [Elecraft] K3 Obsolete?


> At 08:40 PM 11/11/2008, Mark Bayern wrote...
> > > it should be this one for the DSP
> > >
> > > http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/print/tms320vc33.html
> >
> >That page _DOES_NOT_ say the chip is 'obsolete', it says
'Product is
> >Not Recommended for New Design'.
>
> Same thing. You're obviously not familiar with semiconductor
marketing,
> and how they "spin" things.
>
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