Packetfury.net

I have to concentrate. I've searched through my backups to find all of my old work, and I'm going through everything. I have to get this right.

Tomorrow, I have 3 job interviews, and two of them are for embedded systems, something I would love to go back to. I've done quite a bit over the last few years, but it wasn't my primary task, unfortunately. At BlueKanGo, I've done some semi-embedded systems (read: Ultra light-weight Linux systems), and some embedded (Linux on a PDA), but it wasn't my primary task. At Odixion, I did some robotics systems, as well as embedded CD/DVD burning/duplication systems. All of that was extremely fun, and I love embedded systems, for their simplicity (relatively speaking, when compared to PCs), and their robustness. I also love the challenge of doing everything in a tight footprint, and getting it right the first time round.

So, what processors have I used? Well, there is the good old 68k, my first love. It was the processor that powered the Amiga 500, my first "real" computer, It's the processor I learnt assembly on. Years later, in a French school, we fiddled about with a 6502 just to learn about digital processors, memory management and a little bit of assembly. I had great fun with that, believe me!

Years later, again, same fun, but a much more advanced architecture. This wasn't about flashing lights or playing Tic Tac Toe, this was about controling a robotic arm, picking up CDs, putting them on a tray, moving the tray to the right position and handing over the control to a printer, then taking over again, putting it in the right place, picking it up again and putting it in the output bin. Add a little bit of advanced coding in there, to calculate the weight of the CD, the correct acceleration to use, and even the time it takes to get from one point to another, all that to calculate if the robotics are working well, of if maintenance is needed. That was fun!

Again, years later, embedded systems at BlueKanGo. The new version of their Netbooks was, at one point, ultra light, the entire OS residing in an 8Mb image, containing a minimal X, web browser, and that's about it. It was proof-of-concept, and it didn't stand up to today's requirements (sound, video and Flash), but it was a good starting point. The stage 1 and stage 2 were compiled for LPIA in mind (Low Power Intel Architecture) and it was fast, even on an Atom.

During the last few years, I've also been having great fun with an hx4700 (more detailed pages available on my blog), creating at first a Linux-based agenda, then more specialized systems (webserver, MySQL server, even a NAS at one point, "juste because I could"). It is a great platform, and it has been a joy to play about with. It is still next to me, and I still play about with it. It is one of the best machines I've owned!