[volt-nuts] "*WAY* too expensive for even Keysight to redesign"

[John Phillips]

I would think that a lot of the patents would be running out soon as if
that would make any difference.

On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 11:14 PM, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk at phk.freebsd.dk>
wrote:

> --------
> In message
> <DB3PR05MB171EDDFB1237019D474778B95DA0 at DB3PR05MB171.eurprd05.prod.ou
> tlook.com>, Alan Ambrose writes:
>
> >>Come on, we all know how this will end... a raspberry-pi like
> >>processor running a virtual machine emulating the original processor
> >>(running the same firmware) and taking care of everything digital,
> >>and the analog asics doing what they do best.... HP48 style.
> >
> >Daniel, that made me laugh :). Begs a question though - even if
> >Agilent or whoever they are called today don't have the smart
> >personnel or the market incentive to do a good job of bringing the
> >whole thing up-to-date, they could add a better display, better
> >connectivity, more stats, smaller packaging, more modern components
> >etc and leave the clever analogue stuff alone. Sooner or later,
> >someone is going to want to move the start of the art forward from
> >the late 1980's.
>
> In the HP3458A the cleverness is not just in the analogue stuff.
> There is no way you could do something like that without stepping
> over HP's software copyright.
>
> You can probably get away with a FOSS project, provided you do it
> in a way where people extract the necessary bits from their own
> meter (using GPIB), but there is no way you can (legally) do it as
> a commercial project.
>
> That said, there are *so* many interesting things you could do with
> that meter with improved software...
>
> --
> Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
> phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
> FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
> Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
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-- 

*John Phillips*