Organization: Queen's University at Kingston
Date: Thursday, 23 Jul 1992 17:29:52 EDT
From: <LEEK@QUCDN.QueensU.CA>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Questions about GAL .JED download file
 <1992Jul22.125437.5876@bernina.ethz.ch>

In article <1992Jul22.125437.5876@bernina.ethz.ch>, rudi@igc.ethz.ch (Rudi V.
Drunen Groningen) says:
>
>That's the very same thought as I have on GAL manufacturers, WHY don't they
>give out their programming specs ?. It's common practice that the EPROM
>manufacturers add their programming specs to the data sheet.
>I REALLY DO NOT UNDERSTAND why those chip-mfgrs make these specs a secret.

Same here.  The way I see it is that big companies would probably have
enough volume & $$$ to make their own gate arrays.  The smaller
companies and little guys like myself have to play around with GALs.

Their excuse seems to be the fact that they want to limit their product
to be programmed by a few approved (ie tested to their specs)  commerical
programmers.  By getting rid of the spec, the hacker crowd wouldn't be
able to program their own chips and blame them if their chips don't
work.

The fact that anyone who has $$$$ to buy a digital storage scope and a
Univeral programmer can figure out the spec for a lot of chips easily,
show that this is not targeted again competitors.

>There are a number of 2nd sources of gals, so LATTICE doesn't have to keep
>the specs a secret i think. Also, there are a lot of programmers on the market
>built on vague assumptions of programming specs, which is a NO GOOD THING !

Lattice have a list of programmer that meet their approval.

>SO WHY DO YOU MFGRs KEEP YOUR PROGRAMMING SPECS A SECRET ??
>please is there anyone who can explain this ?

I don't know.  Motorola is enjoying success with their low cost 68HC11,
68HC705 development systems that cost < $100.  My school bought about
30+ of HC11s for the undergrad to play with for their courses.  Guess
what chips they might be using if they do graduate and become Engineers.
(Scary thought as some can barely do wire wrapping.  :)

Guess what & whose chips in my designs if I do graduate and got myself
a job in a big company....  (BTW I did a VLSI project designing my chip
using semicustom technology.)

On the other hand the Intel 80C196 system is so expensive ($500) and
unsupported, there are only 2 in the research being used.  The department
is definately moving away from the Intel in favour of the cheaper
Motorola EVB's.

I think Motorola by making their microcontroller development system available
below the $100 market and making the chips easy to program (with bootstrap mode
on the HC11 & HC705 available to users & example circuits) would make
it big on the microcontroller market.  Maxim (not in same market) is doing
something similar with their products with < $100 evaluation kits, application
notes etc.

This is a sad thing to see the industry is dominated by law suits (Apple,
Intel etc),  marketing (Intel again) rather than innovations.  This
pretty much stop the smaller companies to come up with neat stuff as the
big companies holds all the important patents.

>Rudi van Drunen
>Electronics design Engineer, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.
>(rudi@igc.ethz.ch)

K. C. Lee
Elec. Eng. Grad. Student