Lpc2000

At 04:22 PM 7/9/04 +1200, you wrote:
>It may seem like angst over an external pin, BUT I have made one product
>(with motorola chip) which used an external pin to force it into boot
>loader mode. I had one customer who kept sending units back for repair
>as someone in his organisation had a misswired serial lead!!!!!

You mean that the unit was actually erased or programmed?  All the serial 
downloads I've seen require a reasonably lengthy sequence before you could 
do either.  It's rather hard to envision getting that far simply because of 
a cable problem.

If it was simply a matter of not communicating, then I have run into that 
as an enduser.  But it doesn't take the addition of a programming line to 
cause that.  Serial breakout boxes exist for a reason you know :)

Of course all the pins have predefined and used functionality for a serial 
9-pin d-sub which makes an off the shelf cable more of a potential problem, 
but the 25 pin has a number of pins that are not usually used (or you could 
us some other connector entirely).

>His fault, BUT who gets the blame for an unreliable product.

Well if simply hooking up the pin caused the unit to cease functioning 
until re-programmed I'd have concerns about it's functioning in the real 
world.  But if just means they don't operate until the cable is 
corrected?  A lot of equipment won't operate correctly with a bad cable.

>I never had that problems with another product with software activated
>flashing code.

The biggest problems I've seen or had to worry about with software 
activated code occur when the activation code is part of the downloaded 
image and then you have to worry about
- what happens when the download is interrupted before completion
- what happens if there is a bug in the new image that doesn't allow 
another download to occur.  Hopefully through test and review makes this 
possibility unlikely but I seem to remember stories of products this has 
occured to (I seem to remember compuserve or AOL having a problem like this 
many moons ago)

Robert

" 'Freedom' has no meaning of itself.  There are always restrictions,
be they legal, genetic, or physical.  If you don't believe me, try to
chew a radio signal. "

                         Kelvin Throop, III