[EAS] Ira's comment

[Ira Wilner]

Point well taken.  As the point man (architect) of the Vermont EAS system
when it was first rolled out, I had to visit a few stations to program their
EAS boxes for them.  Had the units been of a brand incapable of field
programming I would have been stymied.  You can't assume there won't be
growing pains and changes in a system as it matures.  So, how can you expect
a box to be delivered with locked in programming?  Obviously there should be
a common ground.  Ship the unit with appropriate programming based upon a
form filled out by the purchaser or maybe their SECC point person.  But, do
not lock the programming in stone.  A device that requires a new factory
burned PROM every time you need to alter its behavior is not a viable
option.

--Ira

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-----Original Message-----
From: eas-bounces at radiolists.net [mailto:eas-bounces at radiolists.net] On
Behalf Of Tom Taggart

The other side of the coin is that if the unit is not ready to work right
out of the box, it will likely never work to its potential.

There's a small station 100 miles or so east of us owned by a DJ. Our
station has kind of inherited them in a way...last week my ops mgr. was over
there getting their production computer to (once again) work with the
soundcard so they could do production. The local computer "guru" is
clueless. 

As long as station like these can buy a converter (or even a full box that
doesn't come preprogrammed) that will spit out RMT's & has a button to push
to run a RWT, they've met FCC requirements. Actually getting emergency
messages or having anything else useful will never get done.