look, i lose.  i mentioned it to the list to see if there was something i
missed.  any glimmer of hope died yesterday with the 18F more than 6 months
out, and the 77A even beyond that.  Past that, it was about letting others
know where the weakness was, for their own benefit.  I already knew how
screwed I was.  And I'm pissed because during this rant I'm ass deep in the
most insane code that's ever been written for the sole purpose of working
around a known defect in the chip.  The design philosophy of the flash
memory was "let's prevent a code writer from destroying his own boot loader"
and not "let secure the chip so only the author can update it".

If the 77A came out on time more than half a year ago, I've got no problem.
When it finally comes out, it will have been more then 1 year late.  So I
say again, thanks for nothing.  Those guys ain't starving over there.  Their
job is to separate you from as much money as they can, I know this.  But
here I'm forced to deal with a totally unessary chicken and egg beast.  I
just didn't need this right now.

From a fellow coder who's in the crunch--- royally screwed.



-----Original Message-----
From: pic microcontroller discussion list
[mailto:PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]On Behalf Of Olin Lathrop
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 11:59 AM
To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: [PIC]: whining about the 16F877 code protection


> Look guys, bottom line, I'm having a real hard time understanding why
> everyone is defending a multi-billion dollar behemoth, who not only was
> aware that their chip architecture was fundamentally flawed more than 24
> months ago, but made a business deicision to delay the fix solely for
> dollars sake,

Um, that's what they're supposed to do.  They're running a business, not a
charity.

> paying no heed whatsoever to the fact that their very
> customers are put a severe risk of code copying.  Quite frankly, they did
> not give a sh*!*t.

Companies make decisions all the time not to address particular markets.  No
one product is going to satisfy all customers.  OK, so Microchip produced a
part that doesn't fit your needs.  The F877 does fit a lot of other people's
needs, so it looks like they got it right.  It's not their fault that you
screwed up and are trying to use it in a way it was not designed to support.
To follow this logic, you should be just as irate at all the other companies
that make all the other products that also don't fit your needs.

By the way, I thought your subject implying that only you should get the
last word was rather pretentious and arrogant.  I've taken the liberty of
changing it to more accurately reflect the content.


********************************************************************
Olin Lathrop, embedded systems consultant in Littleton Massachusetts
(978) 742-9014, olin@embedinc.com, http://www.embedinc.com

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