26 Oct
2011
26 Oct
'11
10:25 a.m.
On 10/26/2011 12:20 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
Yeah, I really can't disagree with that. That's only how I tend to
think of things. One really has to consider them on a case-by-case
basis. There's at least one popular MP3 player that will give you a
UNIX shell prompt if you frob it just right. (iPod Touch)
Kinda like the "what constitutes a minicomputer" debate. Nobody
disagrees that, say, PDP-11s are minis, but nobody can coherently tell
you why. People who know about this stuff just "know".
Just musing,
anyway. I feel like going down this taxonomy rabbit hole
is as much of a fool's errand as the "speed metal"/"thrash
metal"/etc.
arguments we'd have in high school.
Exactly. We're a long way from the time that "embedded" meant 68HC11
or 8051-style applications. I know that there's at least one vendor
that sticks a Linux system inside what amounts to a 100BaseT female
connector. Is it embedded? I'd say so.
The absence or presence of file systems is neither here nor there. I
wouldn't dispute that a $20 MP3 player, for example, is an embedded
application, but there's a file system in there for certain. Operating system? Well, there are OSes that fit
inside a low-end
PIC. For that matter, there's a version of Linux that runs on a
PIC32 ?C.
Indeed, 2.11BSD has been ported to PIC32!
Rabbit-hole indeed. The boundaries are very
indistinct.
Particularly when someone is talking about internet-connected home
refrigerators.
Agreed 100%.
Technology has a tendency to obsolete terms of art.
On my local
Craigslist, there's a seller who advertises a "minicomputer" for
sale. It's basically an mobile device with an external keyboard.
Yes, that drives me nuts, though I suppose it's unavoidable. Is it
Maxim or DalSemi who sells ICs in a package called "Flip Chip"?
And no matter what terms of art become obsolete, we are doomed to
argue about them here. ;)
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
New Kensington, PA