On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 13:52:18 GMT, "Pygmi" <bronco_castor@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>
>"Nicholas O. Lindan" <see@sig.com> wrote in message
>news:IKJRd.1052$Ba3.552@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
[...]
>> Since you will never ever do it _right_, the best to be hoped for
>> is that _something_ is accomplished with the resources available.
>>
>> If this something looks promising then more resources are laid on
>> the table and you try again.  And again, and again ...
>
>Again, this is so true. Every now and then I just need to do
>SOMETHING (i.e some kind of proto) AND DO IT FAST,
>just to prove that the concept itself works. Then, if/when other

We must do SOMETHING.  THIS is something.  Therefore, we must do THIS!

Regards,

                               -=Dave
-- 
Change is inevitable, progress is not.

"Nicholas O. Lindan" <see@sig.com> wrote in message
news:IKJRd.1052$Ba3.552@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
> > That is so true. If there was just time enough to do everything as it
> > should be done.
>
> This is also so true: "Work expands to fill the time allotted to it"
> [Parkinson] ... plus 25%.
>
> > If you don't have the time to do it right, where are you going to find
> > the time to do it over?
>
> Since you will never ever do it _right_, the best to be hoped for
> is that _something_ is accomplished with the resources available.
>
> If this something looks promising then more resources are laid on
> the table and you try again.  And again, and again ...

Again, this is so true. Every now and then I just need to do
SOMETHING (i.e some kind of proto) AND DO IT FAST,
just to prove that the concept itself works. Then, if/when other
people feel confident, there just might be more time to do it
"properly". Unfortunately not probably the "absolute right" way,
bot closer to that....

I think that doing all things (like embedded SW) truly "right"
is possible only on your own/hobby projects, where hours
are not being counted...and timeschedule is the one you choose
and change as you wish.

> Until:
>
> The day it is perfected is the day it is obsolete.
>
> Sic transit gloria mundi.
>
> -- 
> Nicholas O. Lindan, Cleveland, Ohio
> Consulting Engineer:  Electronics; Informatics; Photonics.
> To reply, remove spaces: n o lindan at ix  . netcom . com
> psst.. want to buy an f-stop timer? nolindan.com/da/fstop/

Pygmi

> We're doing similar things with our prototypes, though not on such a
> grand scale.  Our general purpose prototyping micro is the ATmega16.
> The final applications will generally be in the .5 to 8k program
> memory range. Not sure what chips production will use.  Probably not
> AVR. :-(  One customer wants us to pick from an "approved micros" list
> which does not include AVR, and another application has a 125 C
> temperature requirement.  It's not my decision in any case (though I
> did have input on the prototype micro.  ;-)
>

There are 125'C AVRs coming this year.
-- 
Best Regards,
Ulf Samuelsson
ulf@a-t-m-e-l.com
This message is intended to be my own personal view and it
may or may not be shared by my employer Atmel Nordic AB

> That is so true. If there was just time enough to do everything as it
> should be done.

This is also so true: "Work expands to fill the time allotted to it" 
[Parkinson] ... plus 25%.

> If you don't have the time to do it right, where are you going to find
> the time to do it over?

Since you will never ever do it _right_, the best to be hoped for
is that _something_ is accomplished with the resources available.

If this something looks promising then more resources are laid on
the table and you try again.  And again, and again ...

Until:

The day it is perfected is the day it is obsolete.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

-- 
Nicholas O. Lindan, Cleveland, Ohio
Consulting Engineer:  Electronics; Informatics; Photonics.
To reply, remove spaces: n o lindan at ix  . netcom . com
psst.. want to buy an f-stop timer? nolindan.com/da/fstop/

Dave Hansen wrote:
> On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 00:04:08 +0100, "Ulf Samuelsson"
> <ulf@a-t-m-e-l.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>>[...]
>>>
>>>>That is so true. If there was just time enough to do everything as it
>>>>should be done.
>>>
>>>If you don't have the time to do it right, where are you going to find
>>>the time to do it over?
>>>
>>>Regards,
>>
>>
>>Tell that to Motorola/Freescale which put a 16 bit bus on
>>the MC68000 (which was the right thing to do) instead
>>of an 8 bit bus, which could have won them the IBM PC deal.
>>Intel has had plenty of time to put things right afterwards.
> 
> 
> My understanding is that it was the peripheral support for the 8088
> (e.g., 8259, 8250, 8255), rather than simply the 8-bit bus, that
> tipped the scales in Intel's favor.  If the 8080 and 8008 had a 16-bit
> external bus, IBM might have gone with the 8086 instead of the 8088.
> 
> I'm not sure when Moto came up with the 68008, but it was probably too
> late.
> 

There was another technical standpoint: the 80x86 code is shorter
than the equivalent 68k code. This is mostly due to the fact that
Intel decided to dedicate certain registers for certain uses
(cx for count, dx for I/O addresses, si and di for string ops etc).
Motorola stayed more fidel to the basic PDP-11 philosophy (where the
Motorola processors have their roots) using universal registers.
This needs more bits for the register addresses, and there are no
single byte opcodes in a 68k processor. The instructions
are definitely longer than the equivalent Intel instructions.
This is partially offset by the fact that there is less need for
shuffling the register contents around,

There is strong evidence that the initial PC designers were hard
pressed for memory: e.g. they used the interrupt vectors reserved
for Intel (0x00 to 0x1f) to keep the total interrupt table short.
The same reasoning seems to be behind the initial boot address
of 0x7c00 for nearly the top of a 32 kbyte RAM.

-- 

Tauno Voipio
tauno voipio (at) iki fi

"Ulf Samuelsson" <ulf@a-t-m-e-l.com> writes:
> Tell that to Motorola/Freescale which put a 16 bit bus on
> the MC68000 (which was the right thing to do) instead
> of an 8 bit bus, which could have won them the IBM PC deal.
> Intel has had plenty of time to put things right afterwards.

Even better would have been to make the bus width selectable, like
they did on later chips, including the MC68HC001.

For the MC68000, this would have added only a small amount of additional
circuitry.  Since there weren't any extra package pins left over on the
64 pin DIP to use for dynamic bus sizing, they could have added a way to
tell the chip at reset time whether to use 8 or 16 bits, for instance,
by whether there was a pullup or pulldown on one of the signals.

Ulf Samuelsson wrote:
> 
... snip ...
> 
> Sometimes time to market is more important than other things.
> 
> I know of an application where they used a $50 PowerPC cluster
> to control a fan. (4 MB Flash , 16 MB SDRAM external ADC etc. Now
> when they have the orders, it is beeing redesigned with $1-2 micros.
> 
> It is painful to see the things beeing done in the wrong way
> to win a smaller customer and this kills the time to market for
> a larger customer.

Which is exactly what I wanted to do 30+ years ago for a killer PBX
system with a MicroData processor, but the penny-pinching president
insisted we get it working with the 8008 (which was all that was
available then).  We did, but the delays in recovery from noise
bursts etc. drove the customers away.  The customer will put up
with an occasional 1/2 second hole in transmission, but 5 to 15
seconds means they have hung up in disgust.

Later they redesigned for the 8080, which could handle it, but by
then I had left in disgust.  A similar area was the power
supplies.  Others could do those better than we could.

-- 
"If you want to post a followup via groups.google.com, don't use
 the broken "Reply" link at the bottom of the article.  Click on 
 "show options" at the top of the article, then click on the 
 "Reply" at the bottom of the article headers." - Keith Thompson

On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 00:04:08 +0100, "Ulf Samuelsson"
<ulf@a-t-m-e-l.com> wrote:

>>
>> [...]
>> >
>> >That is so true. If there was just time enough to do everything as it
>> >should be done.
>>
>> If you don't have the time to do it right, where are you going to find
>> the time to do it over?
>>
>> Regards,
>
>
>Tell that to Motorola/Freescale which put a 16 bit bus on
>the MC68000 (which was the right thing to do) instead
>of an 8 bit bus, which could have won them the IBM PC deal.
>Intel has had plenty of time to put things right afterwards.

My understanding is that it was the peripheral support for the 8088
(e.g., 8259, 8250, 8255), rather than simply the 8-bit bus, that
tipped the scales in Intel's favor.  If the 8080 and 8008 had a 16-bit
external bus, IBM might have gone with the 8086 instead of the 8088.

I'm not sure when Moto came up with the 68008, but it was probably too
late.

>
>Sometimes time to market is more important than other things.
>
>I know of an application where they used a $50 PowerPC cluster
>to control a fan. (4 MB Flash , 16 MB SDRAM external ADC etc.
>Now when they have the orders, it is beeing redesigned with $1-2 micros.

We're doing similar things with our prototypes, though not on such a
grand scale.  Our general purpose prototyping micro is the ATmega16.
The final applications will generally be in the .5 to 8k program
memory range. Not sure what chips production will use.  Probably not
AVR. :-(  One customer wants us to pick from an "approved micros" list
which does not include AVR, and another application has a 125 C
temperature requirement.  It's not my decision in any case (though I
did have input on the prototype micro.  ;-)

>
>It is painful to see the things beeing done in the wrong way
>to win a smaller customer and this kills the time to market for
>a larger customer.

Having extra resources for prototyping _is_ the right way.  In our
market, anyway, we sell the capability with the prototype, then go to
production with hardware that more closely matches requirements
(especially now that we know much better what those requirements
actually _are_).

Regards,

                               -=Dave
-- 
Change is inevitable, progress is not.

>
> [...]
> >
> >That is so true. If there was just time enough to do everything as it
> >should be done.
>
> If you don't have the time to do it right, where are you going to find
> the time to do it over?
>
> Regards,


Tell that to Motorola/Freescale which put a 16 bit bus on
the MC68000 (which was the right thing to do) instead
of an 8 bit bus, which could have won them the IBM PC deal.
Intel has had plenty of time to put things right afterwards.

Sometimes time to market is more important than other things.

I know of an application where they used a $50 PowerPC cluster
to control a fan. (4 MB Flash , 16 MB SDRAM external ADC etc.
Now when they have the orders, it is beeing redesigned with $1-2 micros.

It is painful to see the things beeing done in the wrong way
to win a smaller customer and this kills the time to market for
a larger customer.


-- 
Best Regards,
Ulf Samuelsson
ulf@a-t-m-e-l.com
This message is intended to be my own personal view and it
may or may not be shared by my employer Atmel Nordic AB