Well, things have not gone as one would expect...
And, they may well be due to rules, regulations, and mindsets... and,
specifically, ones generated from an "American mindset."
Now, there is the "rest of the world" as we move to "globalization" these
ideas here will hardly set the course--I have afraid our part will be more
of passenger, as opposed to a captain... the best I can see is, using our
"paddle" we are able to affect a slight course change in our favor...

If one of your arguments is, don't propose any ideas until you have a
complete working design--I see that as more an answer to my original
observation... progress remains slow-to-halted, that simply being one of
the contributing factors...

If you seek to give a list of "why it can't work", that is helpful, but,
bear in mind, I was looking more for a list of "why it can."

Warmest regards,
John
--
When Viagra fails to work--you are DOOMED!!!

"Dave Platt" wrote in message
...
| In article ,
| John Smith wrote:
|
| Hmmm, I thought it "right in line."
|
| If such equip. was adopted, then just as with computers, you could
| buy/cut/etch a "card" with the expectation it could be inserted right
into
| the bus of that radio and function, taking on responsibilities--for say
an
| audio amp (just as that EXACT capability exists with a computer bus)....
|
| Indeed, this idea does NOT bypass homebrewers, it encourages them and
| provides them MUCH more opportunity to participate in constructing their
own
| equip.... I see it as EMPOWERING homebrewers--far from the opposite!!!
|
| As others have (I think) pointed out, there are some very valid
| technical and regulatory problems which might make this approach less
| than popular.
|
| Here in the U.S., at least, transmitters in most of the radio services
| have to be "certificated" (previously "type accepted") by their
| manufacturer, demonstrating that they comply with the operational and
| emissions rules for that service. In these services, almost any
| physical modification of the radio will invalidate the certification,
| and make it technically illegal to use it to transmit. Modifications
| which don't violate the certification can only be made by technicians
| or organizations with a specific license, and (I believe) may require
| a significant amount of re-testing to demonstrate that the radio still
| meets the requirements.
|
| The FCC rules don't provide for the arbitrary swapping around of radio
| cards in such transmitters.
|
| Also, there's a tradeoff between modularity, and cost/performance.
| The more modular a radio (or computer) is, the greater the number of
| gozintas and comesoutas (i.e. signal connectors, busses, etc.). These
| add cost, they decrease reliability (compared to a soldered
| connection), and they limit the degree to which one can take advantage
| of increasing degrees of device integration at the chip level.
|
| The highly-modular PC infrastructure has gotten to where it is, in
| terms of price and flexibility, because of the extremely large number
| of units produced - there's a lot of "economy of scale". This is due
| in large part to the fact that consumer, business, and industrial
| applications can all use the same architectures. People have also
| been extremely eager to take advantage of higher-performance
| components and have been willing to accept relatively short product
| lifetimes as a result... and this increases the demand for a "change
| out part of the system and keep the rest" solution which demands
| modularity.
|
| I don't think that the same environment exists for radios. Commercial
| and public-safety radios have a long lifetime, they have the need for
| physical ruggedness which may discourage the use of a "plug-in"
| architecture with lots of connectors that can shake loose, they're
| rather cost-sensitive, and for regulatory reasons they probably cannot
| adopt a "Users may change out components" architecture.
|
| In these radio services, a "You buy it, and it never changes"
| shrink-wrapped monolithic radio design simply makes more business and
| economic sense.
|
| Things may become a bit more friendly in this regard, at least for
| base stations, with the newer "software defined radio" architectures.
| However, in commercial and business services, the FCC insists that the
| systems be designed and built in a way which prevents users from
| making arbitrary changes to the configuration which could violate
| regulations. One example of this is the Atheros 802.11a/b/c wireless
| radio cards... their behavior is very strongly defined by their
| firmware, and the vendor says that they *cannot* release the firmware
| or low-level drivers in source-code form for fear of violating the
| FCC's software-radio rules.
|
| Frankly, I think that the amateur radio service is probably one of the
| few services (and perhaps the only one) in which a general-purpose
| "radio card plug-in" architecture or system could be generally useful,
| and the resulting radios would probably be significantly more
| expensive than monolithic-board or proprietary-bus radios of similar
| capabilities.
|
| Due to the limited size of this market (compared to business and
| public safety) I doubt that you'll see the big manufacturers invest
| the time and money required to develop and promote and market such an
| architecture. No sense in their doing so. Without the leverage of
| being able to use the same technology in other radio services, it's be
| a big investment for no return.
|
| Indeed, if some were as gifted as all that, they need only buy the case
and
| some foil boards/components--when they emerged from the basement--I'd
expect
| to see a radio of their OWN design in their hands!!!
|
| And there, I think, you've defined the only market to which such an
| architecture would be strongly attractive - hobbyists.
|
| There might be enough of a community there to support the development
| of such an architecture, just as there are communities supporting the
| GNU software radio, the RockMite, and other specialized radios.
|
| Feel free to propose a design, John Smith! If it's as overwhelmingly
| good an idea as you seem to think, maybe it'll take over the world by
| storm!
|
| In short, John, I don't think it's fair to say that there has been "no
| progress". Rather, I'd say that things haven't gone in the direction
| you suggest, because your solution is one which solves a problem which
| most people don't feel is worth solving, and comes with a cost that
| most people don't care to pay.
|
| --
| Dave Platt AE6EO
| Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
| I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
| boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!