I spent 3 weeks attempting to get granted ftp access for documentation on an LCD for an embedded project, and after hearing me yell that phrase to no one, my boss went to his office, called, reminded them how many of those little screens are on a boat making their way across the ocean, still unpaid for and lo and behold 15 mins later, I was in.
The loud invectives that then came from my office for the next few hours as I attempted to translate Japanese and Chinese pages and indices could not be resolved with a phone call but was eventually helped along with an oscilloscope and the blessing that all the numbers and PinIDs were in English characters.
I mean sure Sex is fun, but have you ever seen a perfect Tux come up on an lcd that you hand wired to the dev board on a distro you created kicked off by your own custom bootloader?
(after sooooooo many misaligned, scanlined, and garbled almost tuxes, it was a truly an otherworldly out of body experience.) Punched out.
Hardware is a necessary evil for Firmware or Embedded Software Engineer. You can get by without ever touching it, but I wouldn't recommend it. Feels to me like being a mechanic without ever having driven, which must exist I'd guess, but i wouldn't take them my car.
Yeah, one of my best friends, @Dave does that stuff, and uh, I'm glad I just need to make sure no one's private health data gets stolen by an increasingly fascist state rather than figure out what I2C means.
hehe, that project used a out of spec I2C bus that pulled down the line at zero cross, I had to rewrite a bit banged kernel driver software to handle it. The LCD used standard I2C, it was an interesting problem grateful to never have to solve again.
However these dudes were from the oldest of old schools, they used the zero cross of the power line to tick their clocks across multiple microchips/devices on the bus to literally keep the time, no rtc, no battery always on.
So when I added a couple of more than 8 bit cpus into the mix, they would not let me implement it standard, lest they (read I) would have to rewrite 20 yrs of hardware in the field.
Needless to say a modern 32bit arm chips do not like the i2c pin to be dragged to zero for no good reason 50 or 60 times a second depending on continent the device is plugged in on.
I love my job title because I can implement "Correct by Construction" principles I learned from those guys & all those Hot Tubs and Hot Tub accessories on any device no matter its function. Something I found nigh on impossible for just software products. Plus I enjoy watching the hardware guys face drain of blood when mid proj the reqs change.
I mean, I'm glad I only have to worry about making sure the right responses come out for the stimuli that went in and don't have to worry about things like policies about who gets access to what...
MrCopilot
in reply to silverwizard • • •I spent 3 weeks attempting to get granted ftp access for documentation on an LCD for an embedded project, and after hearing me yell that phrase to no one, my boss went to his office, called, reminded them how many of those little screens are on a boat making their way across the ocean, still unpaid for and lo and behold 15 mins later, I was in.
The loud invectives that then came from my office for the next few hours as I attempted to translate Japanese and Chinese pages and indices could not be resolved with a phone call but was eventually helped along with an oscilloscope and the blessing that all the numbers and PinIDs were in English characters.
I mean sure Sex is fun, but have you ever seen a perfect Tux come up on an lcd that you hand wired to the dev board on a distro you created kicked off by your own custom bootloader?
(after sooooooo many misaligned, scanlined, and garbled almost tuxes, it was a truly an otherworldly out of body experience.) Punched out.
silverwizard
in reply to MrCopilot • •Fuck - I'm *so glad* I don't work with hardware, it sounds awful.
Or at least work with hardware beyond like "This is the computer"
I'm just trying to download their very boring security report
MrCopilot
in reply to silverwizard • • •silverwizard
in reply to MrCopilot • •MrCopilot likes this.
MrCopilot
in reply to silverwizard • • •silverwizard
in reply to MrCopilot • •MrCopilot likes this.
MrCopilot
in reply to silverwizard • • •That is for the most part a truism.
However these dudes were from the oldest of old schools, they used the zero cross of the power line to tick their clocks across multiple microchips/devices on the bus to literally keep the time, no rtc, no battery always on.
So when I added a couple of more than 8 bit cpus into the mix, they would not let me implement it standard, lest they (read I) would have to rewrite 20 yrs of hardware in the field.
Needless to say a modern 32bit arm chips do not like the i2c pin to be dragged to zero for no good reason 50 or 60 times a second depending on continent the device is plugged in on.
I love my job title because I can implement "Correct by Construction" principles I learned from those guys & all those Hot Tubs and Hot Tub accessories on any device no matter its function. Something I found nigh on impossible for just software products. Plus I enjoy watching the hardware guys face drain of blood when mid proj the reqs change.
silverwizard likes this.
Dave
in reply to silverwizard • •like this
MrCopilot and silverwizard like this.