[Info-vax] OT(?): documentation: who needs it? You and me, but not them

[Simon Clubley]

On 2013-10-26, johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk <johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Putting sufficient useful documentation together, in the same way as the 
> "commodity" chip designers of earlier eras would have done, in order to make 
> these products of interest to people buying handsful of chips through Farnell 
> or Digikey or whoever, is of little interest to these folks. Especially as by 
> the time they've got the errors out of the documentation, the chip will have 
> been replaced by a cheaper and faster alternative.
>
> I'm vaguely interested in what you're up to with one of these that needs chip 
> level docs (but maybe that discussion doesn't belong here).
>

There's nothing mysterious about it. :-)

Most of the time, I either want to run in bare metal mode or use a OS other
than Linux (usually a open source RTOS such as RTEMS) on these boards. 

Olimex have started using the Allwinner MCUs on some of their boards
and I picked one up recently (and discovered how lousy the Allwinner
manual for this specific MCU was afterwards). One good thing however is
that there appears to be more detailed information in the manual for a
related MCU series which may also apply to this MCU.

The MCUs Olimex use in their designs have been well documented by the
manufacturer until now so it never occurred to me until afterwards it
might be a issue.

By contrast the TI MCU at the heart of the Beaglebone Black (which I
also picked up at the same time) has a enormous Technical Reference
Manual associated with it (which I have only just started looking at).

> Lots of things (but by no means all) can nowadays be done with system level 
> docs for things like Raspberry Pi (where decent docs are explicitly a goal - 
> sometimes comprised by Broadcom-specific "reference blobs"), or by BeagleBone 
> and other conceptually similar stuff targeted at the relatively low volume 
> market. We shouldn't expect to go to someone who designs for a highhvolume 
> tablet manufacturer and get chip level docs from them. 
>
> I have a feeling that the market isn't what it used to be. And not all the changes are what you and I would class as improvements.
>

You won't get any argument from me on that one... :-(

> Best of luck anyway - you may need it! 

Thanks. :-)

Simon.

PS: Since this is OT for comp.os.vms I will leave it at that unless people
here want to discuss this further.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world