[Elecraft] Firmware updates

[Ray Sills]

I've seen the occasional mention by someone who, when trying to update  
firmware, comes up with an error.. e.g. there recent "I've bricked my  
K3" posting.  And part of the advice to remedy that is to make sure  
that you have the latest version of the Utility.

Well, just for fun, I downloaded the latest version of the KX3  
Utility,  HOWEVER.... it does not run on my computer.  Apparently, my  
OS is "too old" to run the Utility.   Now, I understand that there are  
reasons to update the utility, because it may have more tasks to  
perform.
But, it seems odd to me that I'd need a newer OS to run that  
application.  After all, the job of the Utility it to locate, either  
on the web, or on a local drive, the files that it needs to send them  
to the rig.  I can't believe that there needs to be some extra OS  
feature for simple serial communication from one device to another.

So, I would like to request that the software gurus at Elecraft make a  
special effort to make the Utilities "backwards" compatible with as  
many variants of an OS as possible.  In my case, I use the Mac version  
of the KX3 Utility, and my OS is 10.5.8.  I can't believe that there  
is some critical component that is not in my OS, that -is- in the next  
revision.  It may be that in authoring the latest Utility, it was  
simply compiled by a machine running a later OS, and therefore the  
generated code was "stamped" with the requirement to have that OS to  
run.

This is important to me, because I do not want to "upgrade" my OS  
(even to the new "free" Mavericks) because to do so will cost me a  
number of applications which will no longer run on my particular  
machine.  There's nothing wrong with my KX3, but it would be nice to  
be able to update the firmware, perhaps adding a feature I'd like to  
have.  But, I can't do that now.  I'll be "stuck" with older firmware.

73 de Ray
K2ULR
KX3 #211