I have known a couple of the guys at Xantech for a while...but they are gone.

Some time ago a large corporation bought the company, and things changed. The operation was streamlined from a business point of view, but it became a lot less fun to work there. I know two tech guys and a previous chief engineer, and they are all gone. Another guy, whom I only spoke to rarely as that was for more in-depth info, is also gone.

The present crew are now very good at giving solutions, although I got some answers about a year ago that showed they knew some facts but did not understand the innards of the Xantech devices. This has also improved.

As for the voltages and such, the tech crew do not really get what the circuits are. Imagine the confusion at the other end of the phone when I asked if the output circuit of a dinky link was an emitter follower, or a common emitter, or what. There was just a silent question mark in the air until the person said he did not have that information.

They have never wanted to give out schematics, and probably rightly so as it is much easier for another company to copy a schematic than to figure something out for themselves. This makes some of our really custom stuff more difficult, but I have finally resorted to using a scope, several resistors, and a pad of paper to see what the devices do under different conditions in order to infer what the output circuitry is like. This works pretty well, but you have to be ready to spend your time, not the customer's, to do it.