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- Path: sparky!uunet!europa.asd.contel.com!darwin.sura.net!wupost!cs.utexas.edu!torn!news.ccs.queensu.ca!qucdn!leek
- Organization: Queen's University at Kingston
- Date: Thursday, 23 Jul 1992 17:29:52 EDT
- From: <LEEK@QUCDN.QueensU.CA>
- Message-ID: <92205.172952LEEK@QUCDN.QueensU.CA>
- Newsgroups: sci.electronics
- Subject: Re: Questions about GAL .JED download file
- References: <92203.170353LEEK@QUCDN.QueensU.CA>
- <1992Jul22.125437.5876@bernina.ethz.ch>
- Lines: 64
-
- In article <1992Jul22.125437.5876@bernina.ethz.ch>, rudi@igc.ethz.ch (Rudi V.
- Drunen Groningen) says:
- >
- >That's the very same thought as I have on GAL manufacturers, WHY don't they
- >give out their programming specs ?. It's common practice that the EPROM
- >manufacturers add their programming specs to the data sheet.
- >I REALLY DO NOT UNDERSTAND why those chip-mfgrs make these specs a secret.
-
- Same here. The way I see it is that big companies would probably have
- enough volume & $$$ to make their own gate arrays. The smaller
- companies and little guys like myself have to play around with GALs.
-
- Their excuse seems to be the fact that they want to limit their product
- to be programmed by a few approved (ie tested to their specs) commerical
- programmers. By getting rid of the spec, the hacker crowd wouldn't be
- able to program their own chips and blame them if their chips don't
- work.
-
- The fact that anyone who has $$$$ to buy a digital storage scope and a
- Univeral programmer can figure out the spec for a lot of chips easily,
- show that this is not targeted again competitors.
-
- >There are a number of 2nd sources of gals, so LATTICE doesn't have to keep
- >the specs a secret i think. Also, there are a lot of programmers on the market
- >built on vague assumptions of programming specs, which is a NO GOOD THING !
-
- Lattice have a list of programmer that meet their approval.
-
- >SO WHY DO YOU MFGRs KEEP YOUR PROGRAMMING SPECS A SECRET ??
- >please is there anyone who can explain this ?
-
- I don't know. Motorola is enjoying success with their low cost 68HC11,
- 68HC705 development systems that cost < $100. My school bought about
- 30+ of HC11s for the undergrad to play with for their courses. Guess
- what chips they might be using if they do graduate and become Engineers.
- (Scary thought as some can barely do wire wrapping. :)
-
- Guess what & whose chips in my designs if I do graduate and got myself
- a job in a big company.... (BTW I did a VLSI project designing my chip
- using semicustom technology.)
-
- On the other hand the Intel 80C196 system is so expensive ($500) and
- unsupported, there are only 2 in the research being used. The department
- is definately moving away from the Intel in favour of the cheaper
- Motorola EVB's.
-
- I think Motorola by making their microcontroller development system available
- below the $100 market and making the chips easy to program (with bootstrap mode
- on the HC11 & HC705 available to users & example circuits) would make
- it big on the microcontroller market. Maxim (not in same market) is doing
- something similar with their products with < $100 evaluation kits, application
- notes etc.
-
- This is a sad thing to see the industry is dominated by law suits (Apple,
- Intel etc), marketing (Intel again) rather than innovations. This
- pretty much stop the smaller companies to come up with neat stuff as the
- big companies holds all the important patents.
-
- >Rudi van Drunen
- >Electronics design Engineer, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.
- >(rudi@igc.ethz.ch)
-
- K. C. Lee
- Elec. Eng. Grad. Student
-