[chbot] Digilent ChipKit Uno32

[Michael Field]

On 13/08/2012 9:02 p.m., Volker Kuhlmann wrote:

 > Well I'm not interested in vendor lock-ins and non-portability.

This is getting completely off topic and I'm being a bit facetious, but 
I'm trying to understand how you can reject what to me appears to be a 
useful Arduino work-a-like with claims of "Vendor lock-ins and 
non-portability" when in practice for anybody using the product it makes 
zero difference
- any simple projects (and some complex ones) will move between boards 
with minimal fuss.
- for any complex projects, if the AVR doesn't cut it, then maybe PIC32 
is the answer. The developer understand that it will be locked to that 
hardware
- Maybe it's Arduino's fault for not being portable in the first place, 
not the PIC32's problem. (Like a bit-bashing USB HID stack is ever going 
to be portable...)

I'ld really like to know were you draw the line in the sand vs 
Open/Closed...

What hardware do you use for day-to-day computing?

Do you frown on using 'closed' toolchains to build Open tools? Like in 
the old days when I used HP's C compiler to build Samba?

If you are on a 'closed' CPU? If so, do you have the microcode for it? 
Or the VHDL design for it?

Maybe you one of few who have a working OpenRISC system? If so, did you 
use the vendor's closed tools to implement the design in an FPGA?

What about licensing on DVI-D & HDMI? Is it Display Port only for you? I 
recently implemented DVI-D/HDMI on an FPGA for my own use, and nobody 
came knocking...

Do you have the schematics for your PC's motherboard?

Do you run OpenBIOS?

Do you use TOE NICs or real RAID controllers with their own closed firmware?

What do you use for storage to avoid closed firmware on your disk 
drives?  I've done the magic "fix your mates broken HDD with a 
USB-to-serial adapter" https://sites.google.com/site/seagatefix/ 
allowing us to replace buggy firmware on a bricked drive... it would 
have been so much easier if it was Open Source ;-)

Mike