Programming EPROMs was fun, but erasing them was funner. The ICs had a clear window, and UV light would reset the whole thing. You had to cover the window with a sticker once it was programmed. Good times. Side note - some people are worried about vaccines rewriting their DNA, but actually it's those UV nail-polish-curing lamps that upload new firmware into people! It's a !fact#Photography#RetroComputing#EmbeddedSystems
Worst idea ever? Using Windows 98 as an embedded operating system for an oscilloscope. It takes five minutes for the oscilloscope to boot. DID YOU NOT NOTICE THAT, TEKTRONIX? Anyway... Yeah. I fell sorry for the engineer who had to implement that idea. #RetroTechnology#EmbeddedSystems#BadIdea#Windows98
I have been following Pallav Aggarwal's blog since I noticed his posts on the #ch32v003. But I have really enjoyed seeing all the other content on there as well! This week, Pallav joined me on The Amp Hour to talk about #embeddedsystems and consulting on a variety of different projects. It's clear that his passion for technology and sharing his progress has carried him to the point he's at today, and we all get to follow along on his journey!
One of the most fundamental yet little-known features of FreeBSD is its ability to be used in read-only mode very easily. By installing the system on a UFS file system, you just need to modify the fstab file, change "rw" to "ro," and reboot. On the next boot, the system will automatically create mount points in RAM for the main directories (/tmp, log, etc.), and it will run perfectly.
This was the main reason why, many years ago, I chose FreeBSD for almost all my embedded systems. Even today, on my Raspberry Pies, I keep the SD cards in read-only mode and use external storage in read-write mode. This ensures that, in case of an unexpected poweroff, the system will come back up, and there will be no wear on the memory card.