Re: [ECOS] ethernet download

[Grant Edwards <grante at visi dot com>]

On Fri, Aug 24, 2001 at 10:11:25AM -0600, Gary Thomas wrote:

> > That's when you use hardware-assisted debugging: either a
> > full-up in-circuit emulator or something like a JTAG interface.
> > Wasting several weeks of engineering time (and marketing
> > window) to save a few thousand dollars is false economy.
> > 
> > Or layout the board with a debugging serial port (something
> > with a nice big FIFO that will run at 115K baud or higher) and
> > then don't populate that portion of the board in production.
> > 
> > Or put a header of some sort on the board so that you can
> > attach a daughterboard with a UART.  Something as simple as a
> > three pin SPI or I2C connector can be used to interface to a
> > UART while you're debugging.
> 
> Yup, yup, yup.  However, sometimes the "customer" comes to you
> without any of these things and expects miracles :-)

Yup been there.  By the time they realize they don't know what
they're doing, they're so far behind schedule there's no time
to go back and do things right.  The battle is nearly lost, so
they bring in the mercenaries to burn the fields and bayonet
the wounded...

Such is the life in contract engineering.

It's so much easier when HW and SW are both in-house and you
get a chance to make suggestions before the boards get laid
out.

-- 
Grant Edwards
grante@visi.com