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 ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
