[BC] Maintaining old transmitters

[Alex Hartman]

Apples and oranges sir.

Transmitters 20 years ago were built to last, computers 20 years ago
were built to last.

Neither is really true today in this disposable world. Every HD
transmitter *is* a computer at the heart of it. Show of hands of those
who have had a hard drive failure in their exciter? How about bad caps
on a motherboard in the exporter? And how old were they? That's what i
thought.

There's arguments to be made for everything. Win7 and cloud computing
i'm not sold on. Correct IT practice however, i am. Financials should
be backed up daily on the local machine *and* server, and the server
should be backed up incrementally off-site through some method of your
choosing. It's a little harder to do with music libraries in the
hundreds of gigs in size, but still can be done. But these things do
eventually break down as well. A backup untested is about as useful as
a screen door on a submarine. Computers, Transmitters, in this
instance, are one in the same. How often do you run your 50 year old
backup TX for a few days at a time? (yes, days, not minutes, hours,
but *days*, because in the inevitable failure of your main TX, it can
take *days* to get parts or repair.)

Using financial software from 2005 is just fine, it'll run well on an
XP machine, but the life cycle of a computer really is 3-5 years.
Transmitters sit there and do their thing, they're not beat on,
they're not touched every day for 8 hours a day, etc. Computers on the
other hand are. You might argue that the interactive part is a
keyboard and mouse. Monitors die all the time. The CPU itself can be
taxed, static shock through the keyboard (has happened) can kill a
south bridge chip. Etc. Yes, transmitters take lightning hits, but 99%
of the time, it does little to the transmitter itself. Unless you have
a method of SMT soldering and small fingers to replace itty bitty
caps/resistors/etc on a PC motherboard, lightning generally kills
them. It does happen, all the time. Don't even get me started with
laptops...

Then you have the stupidity of americans in the mix there too. All it
takes is one jock who thinks he knows what he's doing to delete an
entire drive of music to make room for new stuff, or his porn
collection. (again, has happened) The computers are, in today's radio
world, are just as important as the transmitter. They are 50% of the
equation. I don't have a jock in my facility who would know what to do
without the computer running. Carts? Hah! No way. Reading a manual
hand log? Eh, maybe, after a day of training. But they would be
utterly lost on manually pulling up a satellite feed and "board op" a
show.

While i do commend Nautel on maintaining serial number 1, there will
come a time (maybe in another 20 years) when parts will simply not be
available, and either they have to find suitable replacements, or
discontinue a model. It will happen, just not today.

I understand being cheap, but when it comes to actually running the
business, at the core, sometimes bleeding edge is where you have to be
to get the edge in this industry. Lead, follow, get out of the way,
your choice.

Mediocrity in today's radio world will get you a retirement check. You
have to get outside the box, or you *will* be run over.

--
Alex Hartman

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 8:16 PM, Mike McCarthy <towers at mre.com> wrote:
> On 1/31/2012 4:59 PM, Clay Freinwald wrote:
>
>>This problem is compounded by older management that also recall the days when you repaired everything !  They need to
>>made to understand that transmitters are not really unlike computers and copy machines (they have learned about them)
>>
>>Service after the sale becomes a critical part of any major purchase today. Unfortunately, not enough bean-counters and management understand
>>The concept.
>
> This is too funny. I have a peer department head who believes that anything computing more than 3 years old is unreliable and at 5 years should be replaced without question. He only realized my oldest main TX is approaching 30 years old, oldest back-up is closer to 50, and the bulk of the main TX's are 10 years old or older.  I keep telling him the resistors, capacitors, inductors, chips and transistors used in these boxes are the same as used in computers.
>
> We get into heated arguments when a problem arises and it's takes an hour to repair.  Such as swapping caps on the motherboard or replacing a HD or power supplies. All of those items are consumables. But he's bending the CEO's ear about needing to be on WIN7 for everything and cloud computing this and that.  Now if I could get him to convince him to let me get new TX's and processors on 5 year cycles!!!!
>
> What he fails to realize is there is more than just hardware involved.
> We have software licenses, some more than a couple years and versions old and likely don't work with WIN 7 for reasons beyond DRM.  We don't run anything newer than XP OS for various reasons we all know about.  In fact, we just sunset using WIN2K used in an automation system because the owner didn't want to upgrade the system software. The new automation OS is XP and this "latest stuff guy" guy doesn't get it.  It's driving him nuts that we're using an OS two versions ago, CPU's still in the mid 2 GHZ, and believes that bleeding edge is just that, bleeding at the edge.  We're fine with mid-level performance adaquate for the applications to be run.
>
> FWIW, he's trying to get the CEO to migrate computing from engineering to accounting as "that's where business computing all started and that department knows what they're doing."  HAH....The CFO is still using a version of accounting software from 2005.
>
> So far the CEO is listening to engineering....  I have two frugal guys working for me and we firmly believe in exploring repairs up to 50% of new value with replacement only as a last option.  Not the first.
>
> MM
>
> ~_____________________________________________________________~
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> features and the latest technology for only $1000
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