[Elecraft] S: Re: Elecraft Utilities

[Doug Person]

If it works it's not likely to brick the K3.  The Utility program has 
nothing to do with the firmware.  Either the connection to the K3 works 
or it doesn't.  Once it works, loading the firmware is not complicated.

An awful lot of linux programs have been successfully recompiled to work 
on the non X86 platforms.  The catalog on the Pi is uuugh.  So its hard 
to say how complicated it would be to recompile for the Pi (and 
others).  Could be fairly trivial. All depends on how well it conforms 
to the standard linux libraries.

What linux et, al lacks is a good best practices to guide developers 
down a path of using a very standard collection of libs that are 
generally available on 99% of linux distros.  Right now it's the wild 
west and the linux reputation suffers as a result.

So, I hope all the Elecraft linux software becomes available for Pi.  If 
not - oh well.  Tiny X86 boxes are right around the corner.

Doug -- K0DXV

On 4/9/2016 11:32 AM, Kevin Stover wrote:
> And who gets to fix the radio, under warrantee of course, when this 
> home brewed command line utility bricks the radio? Through this whole 
> discussion I've heard very little from proponents of open sourcing the 
> utilities on this minor little point. Telling isn't it.
>
> This could be a profit center for Elecraft now that I think about it. 
> If it were me, I'd charge $1,500 to fix any Elecraft product which has 
> had it's brains blown out by some home brewed and unsupported flash 
> utility.
>
>
>
>
> On 4/9/2016 1:13 PM, ei6iz.Brendan Minish wrote:
>> I think that all most of us would need would be a command line 
>> utility that
>> can be used to update firmware and perhaps back up settings.
>> Either making this open source or just releasing the protocol spec 
>> would be
>> all that's needed.
>> This would not require the firmware to be open sourced, it would just 
>> mean
>> that the Elecraft provided firmwares can be uploaded  to the radio.
>>
>> Icing on the cake would be the ability to make radio backups
>>
>