Being left behind

George Moranian

Do we know how long before the Flex 6xxx reach end of life/support?

George
N1naz

Lionel

George,

Similar concern. Many years ago I put the question on the community about the FPGA having capacity for some the more complex owner "wants." It appears I was correct and I suspect we will see new features for the 8s and not the 6s. The 6s may drop into the maintenance releases unless new work can use the existing FPGA.

Not exactly end of life but the end could be when certain parts are unavailable like the FPGA. Most likely no one knows the end date.

I could be completely wrong but then I'm filling a vacuum where more mfg info should reside.

Neil D Friedman N3DF

Still waiting on a factory update for my Drake TR3.

George Moranian

I guess when V4.x.x comes out there will not be any new features or improvements for the non 8xxx models. Guess it's time to trade in or move on.

George M.

N1NAZ

Mike-VA3MW

Here is what I can tell you. It is always subject to change. This is off the top of my head and do not confused and/mix terms such as service, support and EOL (end of life)

• FLEX-6300, 6500 and 6700 are EOL, meaning we are not building them anymore.
• FLEX-6400(M), and FLEX-6600(M) are EOL with the same meaning
• Service (hardware) is best effort (my words) on the 63, 65 and 6700. Which means we will do all we can with the parts we can still obtain or we might have stock piled. And, in some cases vandalized from doner units.
• FLEX-6400(M) and FLEX-6600(M) are still being service — meaning hardware service

Support and Software

• All 6000 & 8000 radios are still having SmartSDR being built and deployed. As I write this, the current version is v3.8.21for SmartSDR and Radio firmware
• All radios still receive Support for software issues

At some point there will be SmartSDR Features that will only run on the 8000 series. Initially, that will be Adaptive PreDistortion (APD). Exactly how we handle this is not yet decided, but my guess is that the most current version number will be the same for all radios, but some features will be not available on the 6000 series.

Other features, may or may not run on older radios. It would depend on things like CPU resources, FPGA resources, etc. These will get treated on a case by case basis and I am often the last to know! :)

Do we know how long before the Flex 6xxx reach end of life/support?

Good question George. For the FLEX-6400(M) and FLEX-6600(M) hardware service will still be around for a while. We haven't even discussed it much yet.

I hope that helps a bit.