On 1/9/08 1:49 AM, Steve Shockley wrote:
Marco Peereboom wrote:
I don't think so. We check for this before we buy hardware.
I'd bet money that you have hardware that requires driver assist.
I doubt it; if he needs to use a device that doesn't meet his criteria
for "free" (like a cell phone), he just has someone else carry it around
for him. That absolves him from all responsibility without any
inconvenience.
Most chips require bits to be stored in registers (addresses) to get them do
what they need to do. In the 80's manufacturers started with delivering chips
that hadn't all registers in the address space of the processor and subsequent
writes to the same address were necessary after a reset condition to get the
chip working (this spared physical address lines and thus expensive pins on
the chip).
Even if a blob needs to be stored on a chip it's often by sending subsequent
writes to the same address. Sometimes this goes the other way around, with
DMA, the chip reads a block of outside adresses (flash memory or memory filled
by the main processor). Sometimes a memory besides the chip is attached with a
serial connection (i2c etc, saves pins!). I have certainly not mentioned all
way's to get required setup data to chips. But in general: After start the CPU
reads the first bytes of the bios and starts setting up at least all chips
on the motherboard with data from the bios etc etc etc...
+++chefren
