[Elecraft] Saving K2 VFO modes

[Mike-WE0H]

Hi Wayne,

Excellent to hear there is a future to the K2's software. Thank you for 
the update on this. C-U- @ Dayton

-- 
Mike
WE0H
K2 #6698




Wayne  wrote:
> Mike-WE0H wrote:
>
>> You got my vote on open source or finding someone to work on updates 
>> on occasion...
>
> Mike (et al),
>
> The K2's present MCU is maxxed (no code space left). That's the main 
> reason there's been no further development on it. But it's also a very 
> mature product. Requests for changes or additions are very rare. And 
> just to complicate things, there's no way to upgrade K2 firmware over 
> the serial port, as on the K3. K2 firmware updates at present involve 
> swapping in a new chip.
>
> There is, however, a newer PIC available that I believe is 
> pin-compatible with the K2's that would double the code space and 
> allow for a "boot loader" (to make it electronically upgradeable). I'm 
> looking forward to building the code for this part and trying it out 
> sometime.
>
> Regarding open sourcing the K2 code: It would take far more of my time 
> to prepare for this than to just make any needed changes myself. To 
> pack everything the K2 does into a small amount of code space required 
> that much of it be written in assembler, which is inherently more 
> abstruse than C (etc.). It also required the creation of a 
> proprietary, heavily optimized real-time OS. There are a dozen or so 
> state machines and a unique interrupt structure where every cycle is 
> carefully counted.
>
> Even though the code is well-documented, I'd want to create 
> theory-of-ops and maintenance documentation before I tried to hand it 
> off to another programmer. This is often necessary for projects where 
> you don't have the luxury of writing everything in an encapsulated, 
> object-oriented language, such as on a PC with virtually unlimited 
> code space.
>
> Meanwhile, I save all of the suggestions I receive (or see posted) 
> regarding future K2 functionality.
>
> 73,
> Wayne
> N6KR
>
> ---
>
> http://www.elecraft.com