Man that was a long time ago! Back in about 1990 to be exact. That was back when windows was just hitting 3.1 Windows, and long before Windows 95. This is a trip donw memory lane with some history and nostalgia. If you see the Penns again tell them I said hello. We have not communicated in a couple years with them at Southwest. It actually was a piece of cardboard box lid, and they had a small electronics shop someone found and put us together. The individual had come to us through a friend and we were considering project like this. It was the type of cutting edge stuff that we try to do and this was no simple innovation. That was the largest screen Standish Hamlin had ever built at the time, and we were buying the Motorola parts, Silicone Key Pads and more to assemble the units. Not many had wave flux solder baths then and some of the PC boards were manually soldered. Later one was acquired and the process picked up. Here is another bit of trivia most wont realize. The BP-100 and BP 101 projects were a tremendous success for Bass Cat Boats. At the time we were having lots and lots of switch troubles as McGill and Carling were switches that depended on silicone or some form of neoprene boots. The move to the Sabre and Pantera II dashes required a more aesthetic switch, and the marine industry followed overall leaving toggle switches that required boots and worked fine till a bird pecked the boot or moisture from humidity got in there. The switches were not good for the marine industry and there was not a good one. The failure rate was atrocious and we had ETA circuits breakers that no matter what we did they would vibrate loose and fail some as well. Our largest warranty item were the switches and breakers, mostly switches by far. Then pumps were the next item. Had Carling built the switch we have now, then we probably would never have started the project. The move to BP dashes was a great mechanical move. It knocked our actual dash warranty down to nearly none, though the dashes were constantly being blamed for a bad sending unit, failing pump, trim sender that would not work, an air temp probe that was crushed on a stump, and little glitch with a Dow product was our only real failure once production started. The BP-101 was even improved greatly over that. Mind you this was in our strongest time as we were running at max capacity when the other competitive companies were not. The Pantera II and Sabre models were that desired. Though as good as the BP dashes were for BCB, no one ever figured out that they also needed maintenance, nor did hard core anglers accept a change in the move from analog to digital. It didnt matter that their truck had a computer dash, as it looked mechanical to them. Acceptance was not good and while we shed problem, we shed some consumers along the way who would not accept this new technology. It was cutting edge, and the market was not nearly as willing to accept it in the 93- 95 time frame it was introduced. So what was a great mechanical direction, was a bad market direction. Though from this was developed the Smart Craft system, the newer multi digital gauges of others and more. There were Teleflex, Medallion and Yamaha gauges that were LCD, though only the window was a digital gauge. There were not smart systems as we have today. There you have it a little trip down the road of BCB and the most successful and worst failure we probably had in the time. We still miss those digital dashes of the late 90s and if we could afford to have one today it would solve a lot of our issues we all see now. Though the learning curve on what broke and why as well as acceptance was just too steep. Thanks for the memory jog!Rick
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