Marketing: Quantity or Quality?

From: Appert, Kevin <kevin.appert_at_lmco.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2006 09:49:41 -0700

>...shame not to support it.

You might want to do that if you wanted a large number of "try-outs" as
TI does. Forth, Inc. has a track record of not wanting huge legions of
folks calling them night and day with questions on the order of:
"My code doesn't work when I don't put the semicolon on the end" and "I
push stuff on the return stack and it just seems to disappear. I can't
pop it in the next definition. Sometimes it just crashes."

I am not exaggerating, these are questions I have actually had to
answer. What's the most naive Forth question you've come across?

Amusing tech support questions:
<<<http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=tech+support+cup+holder>>>
I don't think that cup holder thing ever really happened, but it makes a
funny story. It's become so widespread that in some circles the CD/DVD
drive is actually called the "cup holder" and there is at least one real
cup holder/cigarette lighter that will install in a drive bay
<<<http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=SIL-CIGCUP-BAY>>>

Be grateful most Forth practitioners are reasonably sharp. Every NARS
who doesn't "get it" but thinks he does can destroy tens of Forth
programming jobs for competent folks.

Also be thankful that Forth, Inc. doesn't have a huge user population to
support. That's the breeding ground for the BOFH.

-----Original Message-----
From: swiftx-bounce_at_forth.com [mailto:swiftx-bounce_at_forth.com] On Behalf
Of Wayne Sierke
Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 11:23 PM
To: swiftx_at_forth.com
Subject: [swiftx] Re: SwiftX MSP430 with MSP-FET430UIF USB Flash
Emulation Tool

TI have been handing them out at their "MSP430 days". And I gather that
they're proving quite popular (at $20 with a F2013 device included).

Even with its shortcomings (and the limited resources of the F2013
device that comes with it) it seems like it would be a shame not to
support it.

Thanks for the info.

Wayne

On Sat, 2006-08-19 at 03:17, Leon Wagner wrote:
> The only TI JTAG interface we *officially* support is the
MSP-FETP430IF,
> which connects via a parallel port. The error you're getting is most
likely
> within the TI driver. We'll look again at the USB drivers. There
have been
> a few maintenance releases since the one we have in the SwiftX distro.

>
> My impression of the USB version of the JTAG interface is that it's
slow.
> If you can use the parallel one, you should.
>
> Laptop with no LPT port? No problem! Try this:
>
> http://www.transdigital.net/info.htm
>
> We use the TransPC card on all our laptops for JTAG, BDM, and other
parallel
> interfaces. Set it for LPT1, base I/O address $378.
>
> --Leon
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: swiftx-bounce_at_forth.com
> > [mailto:swiftx-bounce_at_forth.com] On Behalf Of Wayne Sierke
> > Sent: Friday, August 18, 2006 08:28
> > To: swiftx_at_forth.com
> > Subject: [swiftx] SwiftX MSP430 with MSP-FET430UIF USB Flash
> > Emulation Tool
> >
> > I've been trying out SwiftX MSP430 with TI's USB FET
(MSP-FET430UIF).
> >
> > I've found that it "mostly" works, I can choose the USB port
> > for the JTAG connection, and it correctly identifies the chip
> > that is connected to the FET. However when I attempt to
> > program the flash (RELOAD/!) SwiftX bombs with the Windows
> > Application Error:
> >
> > The instruction at "0x004031ba" referenced memory at
> > "0x0000ffff". The memory could not be "read".
> >
> > On the SwiftX console I get:
> >
> > SwiftX MSP430 EVALUATION 3.2.20c
> > CONNECT TARGET
> > Initializing JTAG interface
> > Target device identification: MSP430F20x3 ok
> >
> > reload
> > Flash erase... Program...
> >
> > and SwiftX bombs.
> >
> > It looks as though the flash is being erased, but anything
> > else that wants to write to the device causes SwiftX to bomb.
> > RESET, RESET-JTAG, R., C@(J), W@(J) all seem to work, as well
> > as DUMPC, but not C!(J),
> > W!(J) (which both bomb with the same error/address).
> >
> > I've tried both on Windows 2000 SP4 and also on Windows XP SP2.
> >
> > If the USB FET device is not currently supported, can/will
> > that change in the future? It looks like it's already very close!
> >
> >
> > Wayne
> >
> >
> >
> >
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