Propriatary code on a Propeller
Sam_sneak
Posts: 14
I have been very frustrated recently as my good old pc appears to not be well. I am not sure exactly what is the cause, but one idea was that the BIOS had code that was preventing a battery up-grade from working. Laptops have EC firmware that uses code in BIOS.
I was considering hacking the BIOS and changing a few things, but I fear that I might never get it right. The BIOS could have a checksum embedded in it and that would have to be calculated and properly changed as well.
And so....
It occurred to me that a Propeller rom might use one or multiple embedded full and/or partial checksums to make it more difficult for people to at least download and adapt code.
And if a checksum might be used in someway as an encryption scheme that Parallax put into the Propeller itself, one might just find a way to make the EEPROM go up a level is privacy.
Anyway, it is just a thought.
I was considering hacking the BIOS and changing a few things, but I fear that I might never get it right. The BIOS could have a checksum embedded in it and that would have to be calculated and properly changed as well.
And so....
It occurred to me that a Propeller rom might use one or multiple embedded full and/or partial checksums to make it more difficult for people to at least download and adapt code.
And if a checksum might be used in someway as an encryption scheme that Parallax put into the Propeller itself, one might just find a way to make the EEPROM go up a level is privacy.
Anyway, it is just a thought.
Comments
It forces all who want to contribute and be involved, to do it for the love, not the money.
I am sure they will have all that Smile in the prop2, just be patient.
100% amateur and hobbysts spirit !
We dont all live from making tutorials and demo boards! in industrial world, closed source rules.
It wouldn't hurt for Parallax to have some industrial volume sales to support all this other stuff.
The only thing I know, is that after having shown the huge possibilities of Propeller to a lot of friends, they all said: "if only it had protection ...we cannot throw our work out in nature without protection ....".
I have a lot of friends who make low volume applications (5000 to 10.000 unit per product, and they have 3 to 5 applications per year).
All of them use PIC (or AVR), and their products have never been copied because pirate companies will never spend too much money cracking a product that will be sold at these low volumes.
If Parallax added code protection, I'm sure they will win all those companies... with a volume of about 30.000 to 60.000 chip sold per companie, I'm sure there is a very big number of compagnies that Parallax could win.
Check for example SparkFun catalog of small boards. All of them use PIC or AVR and target hobbists. Imagine that 50 to 60% of SparkFun boards could have an onboard Propeller instead of a PIC18 or Atmega ...
Having Code Protection is not easy to add (cause of involved technology process mainly), but if added, I'm sure it will propulse Propeller in higher spheres.
Who is this guy Sam_sneak anyway?
Another application that would be interesting is generating 3 phase for brush-less motors (maybe it has been done, I should check the objects) including speed and power control from hall sensors. The DVD motor have the sensors as well as the brush-less motor, so it can be explored. It would come in handy in some forms of R/C models when precise speed control is a factor.
Small cheap 16-bit PICs have special hardware for those types of motor. Microchip sells millions of them.
Propeller will not be used when a 8 DIP PIC will do it. of course.
But Propeller will be used in all stuff needing parallel processing. For example, using a PIC on web powered applications is not easy, as you must rework all your application in order to suite the TCP/IP stack framework. Idem for USB. With Propeller this will never happen, cause you dedicate enought ressources to connectivity and you dedicate all remaining resources to your application logic. Propeller make applications development really easier. Using an RTOS on a linear chip like PIC can solve the pb, but you must pay for RTOS licenses, and all your libs must be RTOS enabled.
With propeller all that will not be needed at all.
Propeller will not replace certain chips in certain applications, but it can bring to market some kind of products that are impossible to achieve with older architectures.
If there were code protection, I'm sure some companies will simply use Propeller to replace some ASICs, or some FPGA/CPLD based designs. Parallax seems to push propeller more as a powerfull replacement of BasicStamp ... a some kind of Super Basic Stamp. This is wrong! Propeller can bring to market a new kind of applications!
The Propeller is fine for certain niche applications but I have yet to see it used in any mass-market product, a so-called killer application.
It hasn't got the performance to replace ASICs and FPGAs. XMOS has cornered that market.
This is what I said Leon !!!! THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN as niche market products exists cause their developpers lives from their revenue, and this will NEVER happen on a chip that has no code protection!!! I know that market very well as I have a lot of friends using PIC/AVR in such market category.
XMOS is more (relatively) succesfull because of code protection and amount of SRAM in chip. XMOS will also never replace some FPGA and ASICs, but I said that for some applications, Propeller or XMOS could be nice replacement when we need such power and flexibility (VGA video signals generation without an FPGA for example). Propeller has actually a single advantage over XMOS is that it's provided in DIP package, which make it easy to prototype some applications without the need of professionnal tools (hot air soldering and smt techno related tools and accessories).