Re: Flash Boards

Brian Hechinger wrote ..
> On Thu, Feb 01, 2007 at 04:57:38PM -0500, Mark Gollahon wrote:
> > Martin:
> > 
> > Thank you for the offer of some up-front funding!  I will certainly consider
> it, but just so that you know, my "hangup" on this project right now is
> the time that will be required for the flash programmer.  The board should
> be quite easy - the flash programmer is another story....
> 
> How hard is that going to be?  Seriously hard?  Or just mildly tricky?

Not seriously hard, but it is going to be tricky - I will have to write a program as well as design the hardware - all while not knowing if I am getting the hardware signals right or not (I've not created a flash programmer before).  I've already reviewed a number of custom flash programmers that hobbyists have been kind enough to post, but none of them are exactly what is needed (most of them are waaaay too slow - overnight programming is ok for one-offs, but when you want to do twenty of them, well, its not good enough).

And don't forget someone still has to put together the bootloader that will go into the flash....  The only non-x86 bootloader I've had experience with so far is RedBoot, and that has been as a user and not a developer.

Needless to say, there is a lot more work to do than just putting a board together....  I'm hoping that we can interest some of the really hard-core "gear-head" embedded types to help out or take over the bootloader once the board is ready.  They'd probably be able to get things running faster than I would.

Regards,
-Mark Gollahon

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