I can really recommend a newsletter by Jack Gnassle(
http://www.ganssle.com ) for you all people who is into embedded
development. A lot of useful stuff and also some very funny stuff like
the following from his last mail. I guess we all recognize our
self's....


An Embedded Toaster
-------------------
Lately a number of folks have sent me a humorous story circulating on
the
'net about a microprocessor-controlled toaster. No author's attribution
is
attached. I'm always amused... as I wrote it for EDN magazine in 1997!

The article was meant as a joke, but at the time various readers noted
that
at least four electronic toasters were already available. So the joke
was
on me.

No doubt today the market is saturated with Internet-aware toasters. But
the story is still fun. Here it is - enjoy.

Day 1. My boss, an engineer from the old pre-CAD days, has successfully
brought a generation of products from Acme Toaster Corporation's
engineering labs to market. Bob is a wonder of mechanical ingenuity. All
of
us in the design department have the utmost respect for him, so I was
honored today when he appointed me the lead designer on the new Acme
2000
Toaster.

Finally, after 4 years of undergrad work in mechanical engineering at
MIT,
and almost a decade working in the appliance group here at Acme, they've
recognized my talents and have given me the responsibility I've yearned
for. I'm excited about this challenge.

Day 6. We met with the president, head of sales, and the marketing VP
today
to hammer out the project's requirements and specifications. We agreed
to
meet a cost of goods of $9.50 in quantities of 100,000. I've identified
the
critical issue in the new design: a replacement for the timing spring
we've
used since the original 1922 model. Research with focus groups shows
that
consumers set high expectations for their breakfast foods. Caf, Late
from
Starbucks goes best with a precise level of toastal browning. The Acme
2000
will give our customers the breakfast experience they desire.

I estimated a design budget of $21,590 for this project, and final
delivery
in 7 weeks. I'll need one assistant designer to help with the drawing
packages. This is my first chance to supervise! I'm looking forward to
making the hire and mentoring this person.

Like all Acme meetings we reached these decisions by consensus. The
company
is family owned and is operated, well, I guess the best word is
"gently".
The little friction that occurs is always resolved fairly. We work hard
but
in harmony. It's a place I hope to retire from in 30 years, as my father
did.

Day 23. We've found the ideal spring material. Best of all, it's a
well-proven technology. Our projected cost of goods is almost a
buck-fifty
under goal.

The rough prototype (completed in just 12 days from the go-ahead!) has
been
servicing the employee cafeteria for the last week without a single
hiccup.
Toastal quality exceeds projections. There's still a lot of work ahead,
as
we do the production engineering that is so important to producing a
reliable product.

Day 24. That block of Acme stock sold to the Mackenzie family in the 50s
was just snapped up by a major aerospace company which had run out of
defense contractors to acquire. At a company-wide meeting we were
assured
that this was an investment only, and that nothing will change. They
will
send in a couple of auditors, but this is just to help us find ways to
do
things more efficiently.

Day 30. I showed the Acme 2000's exquisitely crafted toastal timing
mechanism to Ms. Primrose, the new engineering auditor today. The single
spring and four interlocking lever arms are a thing of beauty.

I wonder if her constant sniffing annoys the others as much as it does
me?

Day 36. The design is complete. We're starting a prototype run of 500
toasters tomorrow. I'm starting to wrap up the engineering effort. My
new
assistant did a wonderful job. We're cleaning up the drawings and
getting
ready for our next project.

Day 38. Suddenly a major snag. Bob called me into his office. He seemed
very uneasy as he informed me that those "on-high" feel the Acme 2000 is
obsolete. Something about using springs in the silicon age.

I reminded Bob that the consultants had looked at using a
microprocessor,
but figured an electronic design would exceed our cost target by almost
50%
with no real benefit in terms of toastal quality.  "With a computer our
customer can load the bread the night before, program a finish time, and
be
presented with the perfect slice of toast when he awakens", Bob intoned
as
if reading from a script.

Day 48. Chuck Compguy, the new microprocessor whiz, scrapped my idea of
using a 4 bit dedicated CPU. "We need some horsepower if we're gonna
program this puppy in C," he extolled, while I stared fascinated at the
old
crumbs stuck in his wild beard. "Time-to-market, you know. Delivery is
due
in 3 months. We'll just pop this cool new 8 bitter into it, whip up some
code, and ship to the end-user."

"What's an 'end-user'?" I muttered as I headed back to the office,
wondering what had happened to our original schedule.

Day 120. The good news is that I'm getting to stretch my mechanical
design
abilities. Chuck convinced management that the old spring-loaded
press-down
lever control is obsolete. I've designed a "motorized insertion port",
stealing ideas from a CD-ROM drive. Three cross-coupled safety interlock
microswitches insure the heaters won't come on unless toast is properly
inserted. We're seeing some reliability problems due to the temperature
extremes, but I'm sure we can work those out.

Day 132. New schedule; delivery now expected in three months. We've
replaced the 8 bitter with a Harvard Architecture 16 bit 3 MIPs CPU.

Yesterday Bob spent over an hour yelling at the engineering team. Chuck
just shrugged his shoulders and whispered "This always happens." I hope
Bob
is OK; maybe he's just short on sleep.

Day 172. New schedule; delivery now expected in three months. Bob spends
a
lot of time throwing stuff in the lab. For the first time I've actually
been working weekends. I mentioned it to Chuck and he mumbled "Saturday?
Saturday? It's Saturday? So what, we always work weekends."

Day 194. The auditors convinced management we really need a GUI with a
full-screen LCD. "You're gonna need some horsepower to drive that,"
Chuck
warned us. "I recommend a 386 with a half-meg of RAM." He went back to
design Rev J of the PCB.

Bob is starting to look a lot like Dilbert's boss, even to the hair
sticking up vertically.

Day 268.  We've cured most of the electronics' temperature problems with
a
pair of fans, though management is complaining about the noise.

Bob sits in his office all day, door locked, drinking Jack Daniels. Like
clockwork his wife calls every night around midnight, sobbing. I'm
worried
about him, and mentioned this to Chuck. "Wife? Wife? Yeah, I think I've
got
one of those, and 2 or 3 kids too. Now let's just stick another meg of
RAM
in here, OK?"

Day 290. New schedule; delivery now expected in three months. Chuck has
gained even more weight; his teeshirts are ripped, though I'm not sure
if
that's from the extra flab or from stiffening caused by congealing food.

We gave up on the custom GUI and are now installing Windows CE. The
auditors applauded Chuck's plan to upgrade to a Pentium with 32 Mb of
RAM.
There's still no functioning code, but the toaster is genuinely
impressive.
Four circuit boards, bundles of cables, and a Gb of hard disk. "This
sucker
has more computer power than the entire world did 20 years ago," Chuck
boasts proudly.

Day 340. The toast application sometimes starts but often gives General
Protection Faults. The auditors are considering Chuck's solution - have
the
end-user call in the GPF address to our new toll-free support line.
We'll
send the end-user a complementary slice of bread.

Day 384. New schedule; delivery now expected in three months. Toastal
quality is sub-par. The addition of two more cooling fans keeps the
electronics to a reasonable temperature, but removes too much heat from
the
toast. I'm struggling with baffles to vector the air, but the thrust of
all
these fans spins the toaster around.

Bob seems worse. All day long we hear him keening "Kill them all! Kill
them
allllll.." After the acquisition our medical plan was downgraded so
there's
little help available for him. "I've seen it all before," Chuck confided
in
me, "I told 'em not to remove the mental health benefits."

Day 410. We switched from C++ to Java. "That'll get them pesky memory
allocation bugs, for sure" Chuck told his team of 15 programmers. This
seems like a good idea to me, since Java is platform independent, and
there
are rumors circulating that we're porting to a Sparcstation.

Day 480. New schedule; delivery now expected in three months, just as
soon
as we get those last few bugs resolved. To reduce power consumption the
computer now sequences fans alternately, but this seems to cause toastal
burning during Java's garbage collection phase. Chuck has assured us
that a
new release of the Virtual Machine is almost due, which will probably
cure
this problem.

The carted Bob off on a stretcher today. It's a shame all of the new
hires
in engineering never got to know him in his prime. They watched sullenly
as
the paramedics wheeled him out, muttering things like "Another one down.
They'll never take me out like that."

Day 530. I mastered the temperature problems by removing all of the fans
and the heating elements. The Pentium is now thermally bonded to the
toast.
We found a thermal grease that isn't too poisonous. Our marketing people
feel the slight degradation in taste from the grease will be more than
compensated for by the "toasting experience that can only come from a
CISC-based 32 bit multitasking machine running the latest multi-platform
software."

We're having some problems with the TCP/IP suite Chuck's networking
group
(now up to 23 programmers) wrote. Management agreed to purchase a
commercial package, though our royalty costs for various software
components is already up to $23 per toaster.

His OS department figured out how to get real time software upgrades
downloaded with hardly any effect on toastal quality. They're trying to
reduce boot time to 10 minutes.

The user's manual is taking shape. The product documentation team has
done
a tremendous job, producing a 4 color 700 page manual in only twice the
time anticipated.

When I asked what we'll do with all of these developers after the
product
ships, Chuck told me "why, move them to the help desks, of course! Plus,
we'll need a decent sized group for bug fixes."

Day 610. Delivery date unknown. Bob slipped away from the asylum last
night
and managed to insert a virus into our network. As I left work this
morning
the police were dragging him away, cackling and screaming with a
maniacal
grin on his face.

The virus destroyed all of our software. "I meant to tell them to start
a
version control team," Chuck mumbled. "Well, this is really good news. I
have some great ideas on how to improve the code. It always pays to toss
out version 1 anyway."

Editor's note: This diary was found clutched in Mr. Widget's hand after
his
body was recovered from the fire. Acme's press spokesman's commented "we
sincerely regret Mr. Widget's suicide, but remain committed to the best
in
toastal quality through the use of the latest technology."

In related news, Mr. Charles Compguy was made Acme's CEO today.


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 ---
Ake Hedman (YAP - Yet Another Programmer)
eurosource, Brattbergav=E4gen 17, 820 50 LOS, Sweden
Phone: 46 657 413430 Cellular: 46 730 533146
Company home: http://www.eurosource.se      Kryddor/Te/Kaffe:
http://www.brattberg.com
Personal homepage: http://www.eurosource.se/akhe

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