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Re: [ox-en] open hardware thread

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On Monday 10 June 2002 14:56, Stefan Merten wrote:

Hi!

5 days ago Graham Seaman wrote:

For anyone interested in open hardware/free hardware design, there's an
interesting thread on opencores starting from:
http://www.opencores.org/forums/cores/2002/06/00004


I started to read the text the thread began with at

	http://www.embedded.com/printableArticle?doc_id=OEG20020524S0078

I think the most interesting point in the article is this one:

  Compilers and debuggers are a lot cheaper than oscilloscopes, logic
  analyzers, and wafer probes. In a neat piece of reciprocity,
  software tools are even available for free under open source. Just
  about any programmer can afford the minimal start-up costs, but most
  hardware engineers don't have the fiscal throw weight to buy their
  own hardware development tools. You need an employer to do that, and
  institutional employers tend to impose institutional thinking.

He put that issue in a number of paragraphs, and I think he has a
point there.

So thinking in terms of a GPL society it's crucial to get the means of
production closer to the homes - at least this is what made the
take-off of Free Software possible. However, FPGA's and other fabber
type things may act as a bridge or even part of the solution.


Yes, the start-up costs of doing these things are quite large (anyone buy a 
GOOD multimeter for under $100 lately?  And a multimeter is one of the 
cheeper devices in this field).  I have some hope that the "ink jet circuits" 
(http://www.eetimes.com/at/news/OEG20020410S0013.  Slashdot has also 
mentioned them from time to time) could be used to make an actual computer 
system, but I've been told (albeit from a Slashdot discussion) that the 
result would be very slow.  You'd be lucky to match Apple // speeds.  At 
least, that is as the technology stands now.

- -- 
Overflow on /dev/null, please empty the bit bucket.
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