On 10/02/2010 07:54 PM, William "Chops" Westfield wrote: >=20 > On Oct 2, 2010, at 1:35 PM, Olin Lathrop wrote: >=20 >> What kind of idiot relies on Hyperterm to upload code anyway!? >=20 > To me, the bigger surprise is not using one of the standard HEX =20 > formats for the data transfer. Those carefully avoid putting binary =20 > data in the data stream, and have the checksum per line that ought to =20 > detect most errors... (Though I wonder just how many of the =20 > bootloaders I use actually check those checksums.) All the bootloaders I've worked with or written have though I haven't worked with a boot loader in a while. I'm a network engineer, not an embedded engineer anymore. Now this is my 'hobby'. > In some sense, this is a sort of "standard mistake" for Desktop PC =20 > programmers faced with their first example of "real" multi-vendor data =20 > communications (not coddled over some consumer-grade shrink-wrapped =20 > set of hardware and drivers (like USB)) But I would have expected =20 > better based on the author's reported background... Ah, I think you've hit it on the head. Though I would have expected the hardware engineer to have some 'common sense'. Is it not normal for a hardware engineer to know some software? Or am I expecting too much? Don't hardware engineers work with software engineer or is everything just thrown over the wall to the next team? --=20 Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .