FreeCalypso progress update

[Mychaela Falconia]

Hi DS!

> Many thanks for the update, Mychaela. Do you think R&S might be
> convinced to lower their quote by letting them know you are just
> a single individual in charge of a FOSS project, not a very large
> corporation with billions of $?

Good news: the issues with our CMU200 have been resolved without
having to involve any expensive repairs.  The technical person at R&S
(as opposed to the non-technical customer service front end people who
originally gave me that outrageous price quote) told me there were two
issues:

1) The tech fellow said that there were two ribbon cables loose inside
the unit.  I am quite sure that I did not pull any ribbon cables loose
when I was replacing that Rx/Tx board, so either they came loose in
shipping, or someone was tinkering inside this unit with insufficient
clue prior to me.  Once the fine folks in Maryland reconnected those
cables, the EEPROM reads which originally failed started working.

2) I don't know what kind of tables are stored in which EEPROM, but
the helpful gentleman from R&S said:

> After further review, it appears the RXTX module that was replaced had
> incorrect tables loaded (probably from its previous location). We were
> able to complete corrections and load them to the EEPROM's. After this
> was done, the unit worked fine.

Of course it is a given that whatever tables were loaded in the EEPROM
on that transplanted Rx/Tx board had to be incorrect for the new
put-together CMU200 configuration and needed to be corrected through
calibration - but I am guessing that because of the transplant, they
were incorrect in some more serious way that R&S's "regular"
calibration procedure was not prepared for.

In any case, the outcome is that the incorrect EEPROM tables have been
corrected, the unit has been fully calibrated, and they already sent
me the calibration certificate with detailed tables and charts of the
unit's exact performance after the calibration, which look beautiful:

https://www.freecalypso.org/members/falcon/calibration/CD_5000-309076293.pdf

They haven't told me if they already shipped the calibrated CMU200
back to me or if they are still in the process of packing it or doing
the paperwork or whatever, but it shouldn't be much longer before it
is back in my motherly FreeCalypso lab.  They haven't charged my card
yet, but I expect the charge to be what I originally agreed to for the
calibration - $1405.00 USD, which is perfectly reasonable for the
perfect calibration and semi-repair job they did, not the other $6415
repair quote which was NOT reasonable.

Hasta la Victoria, Siempre,
Mychaela aka The Mother