3 Mar
2012
3 Mar
'12
12:14 p.m.
That's why I explained that it is. You can have a
detailed doc for our
ingestion STREAM format and the complete source for the IPF decoder,
including our high performance bit accurate WD177x emulator. There are
even third party tools available working with it.
OK, right...
I beleive that for the Diskferret I can get sources for everything (of
course soembody might write closed-source softwre to work with it). For
your device, which parts can I get the soruce for, and which can I not
get it for? Are there any file formats involved that are not fully
docuemtned?
Seocndly, these disk readers are, or at least should be, very verstile
devices. I know that the FPGA code for the Diskferret is available, so if
you want to modify it (at your own risk, of course) to read some other
type of disk then you can do so.
That's why we store raw flux transitions. Even if no sector decoder
matches, you can still read it at the lowest level. You even don't have
to modify or change anything.
And thirdly, there;'s the question of support. I've had_much_ better
support -every time -- from the authors of free software than from
commerical software companies. This may be becuase I am often talkign to
the guy who wrote hte code in the former case. It may be becuase they
genuinely care.
You obviously never worked with me or anyone else in our organisation. But obviously the fact that we are commercial
qualifies you to make any
assumption regarding my (our) work ethics. Would it be fair to say all
That is not what I am doing at all. I feel that money is not a motivator
at all (or at beast a very minor motivator) for good programmers and
designers. And thus that there's no correlation between whether or not
something costs money and how well-designed it is. I interpretted your
original message as implying that you clained your device was better than
the Diskferret becuase it was commercial amd you employed commerical
progrmmers. My ecperience suggests that is faulty reasoning.
open source is crap because the tool I relied on has
been discontinued?
I fail to see how an open-source program cna be discontinmued.
Why would any assumption qualify you to criticize what
we do? What you
say is: A green man cheated me. All green men will cheat. Note that
green was chosen on purpose. If anyone reading this is green please
accept my apologies.
[FWIW, 'green' has 2 meanings when appleid to people in English. The
first, anc rurently common one, means 'environmentally friendly. the
older meaining is 'naive'. I am not convinced there's much differnece in
some cases ;-)]
Many customers work directly with our head of development for very
specific problems and usually we deliver solutions pretty quickly in a
couple of hours or days.
Apart from that we even publish the board schematics. You could build
your own board and use our software for free which means I don't get a
Does this design inovle any programmed parts (microcontrollers, FPGAs,
etc)? If so, do you relase the code that goes into them? If not, then
presuambly I buy them from you, and toy do 'make a cent from me'.
single cent from you yet I would still try to support
you if possible.
How many companies would do that?
Don't reverse my words! I said absolutely nothing about free software. I
do like free software. I only outlined why being commercial is good for
the path we've chosen. We can even afford sending someone over, like we
did several times in the past, to help with setup and give a
That is preceisely what I don't want or need. I want the information to
solve the problems myself. The reason is simple, you (and your company)
will not be around for ever, waht happens when I have problems in 10
years time?
>
feel like arguing against that. What I know is that people deliver good
> work when they are motivated. I see no evil in the fact that people get
> paid because this can be a very good motivation. It also enables you to
> spend money for things that make the product better.You also can spend
> the money to train programmers so they use latest techniques and don't
I
think that's one of the msot insulting things against all the excellent
free software uthors that I have ever read. Are youy seriosuly claiming
that a program like gcc is no good becuase it's free and that the
programmers who wrote it are clueless and not motivated? [No, gcc is not
perfect. But it's better than several commercial C compilers I've been
forced to use]. comprehensive hands-on lesson. We also can afford
donating free boards
and software to certain institutions because others subsidise them.
I am sure this is very unfair to you, but 'the old dope pedlar' keeps
runnign through my mind ;-)
What I said was that someone that gets paid will help you solve your
problem and try to add whatever awkward format is needed to make you
happy. I see nothing evil in that, because there aren't many volunteers
around that will do this.
It happens all the tiem, I can assure you...
Now, let me ask some spcific questions beased on statements that have
been made on this list and which you have not commetned on :
1) Did you use a 74HC244 buffer is the receiver for the drive cable. Did
you then cause Phil (I think) to be thrown off a forum/facebook group
when he commented on this?
2) Is there any truth to the comments about a 'conflict of interests' if
somebody wants to devleop both for your device and the Diskferret?
-tony
Quite simply if that's your attidude I do not
wish to do business with you.
Again, you never worked with us. How insulted would you feel if someone
judged about you in public, without ever having worked with you?