.NET Framework - Micro Framework OEM Developing

Asked By RudyBarbier

05-Mar-07 08:03 AM

I would like to develop a new OEM using ARM7 with Microframework, where i can
find the documention for the creation of the connection between hardware and
HAL?

Thanks in advance
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Rudy Barbieri

11-Mar-07 09:42 PM

Other threads here discuss the fact that it's not publicly available and
there's apparently a significant cost involved to obtain this info. This
reminds me of the Microsoft of the 80's and 90's. Just when it looked like
things were opening up another door gets slammed in your face.

15-Mar-07 12:33 PM

That's a rather unfair characterization of MS here. The key thing to
understand is " at this point" - that is things will change with time. CE
started out with a $60k buy-in price with headless license costs  of $15.
the Porting process is currently sub-optimal & requires  heavy support From
MS of Based on the work being done now with the early adopters the whole
process is being improved.  Future releases will have broader support.
However, if there are as many OEMs porting the MF as there are doing CE,
then MS has seriously failed on the major design goal of the
Micro -Framework. The biggest blocking point for that goal at this point is
a lack of support for  memory mapped devices. Once a managed code solution
exists  for that there's really nothing you can't do in managed code.

--
Steve Maillet
EmbeddedFusion
www.EmbeddedFusion.com
smaillet at EmbeddedFusion dot com

17-Mar-07 02:15 AM

The lack of managed user classes for USB and Ethernet is also a big deal. It
seems that most of the projects for Arm9 devices will need at least one of
these two.

But the overriding constraint is the high cost of getting into the game.
Many of us embedded software authors are contractors who work with hardware
makers. The companies we work with usually want to use their own hardware
designs. They wouldn't even consider buying ready-made boards from someone
else who already did the porting effort. Hardware is their business, after
all.

That would leave people like me with the high cost of porting the MF to
their unique hardware, and that cost would have to be included up front at
the beginning of the project. Since I normally don't get paid a commission on
the number of boards they make, but only get paid a negotiated amount for
writing the software, that extra MF porting cost would cause my bid to be
very high and I wouldn't be able to compete with other consultants.

If MS were to agree to make their money only on a production basis, that
would eliminate the up-front costs that stop me from playing the game. But
the royalty would have to be reasonable. My gut feeling is that the royalty
per production board would have to be under $1 in order to get it approved
without a lot of fanfare. Anything over $2 a board would be out of the
question, except for low quantity projects. You have to understand how much
effort they expend to shave production costs. These are the people who try to
do without an extra resister to save money!

Eric

18-Mar-07 01:53 PM

As Steve points out, this is version 1.  The support cost for the MF team if
they just allowed anyone to get and use the tools would probably sink the
entire product.  It's just not yet at a state that just anyone could get the
tool and port the platform to any random hardware.  For now the buy-in
really is a filter to incent serious people with an active production
project in the pipeline to move forward.

These initial customers and their experience will be what drives the
direction of the platform and the tools and I would expect to see future
versions become easier to use.

If you look at Windows CE as a model, they're on Version 6.0 now and it's
still not a super-simple thing for just anyone to get up and running.  It
didn't even get reasonably straightforward for experienced developers until
the 3.0/4.0 time frame.

I expect to see the MF to become something that can be moved to a set of
common cores and processors as time moves forward.  If your customer is
using one of those processors, it will likely be a fairly easy job to get
the device up.  How long it will take to get there one can only guess.

--
Chris Tacke - Embedded MVP
OpenNETCF Consulting
Managed Code in the Embedded World
www.opennetcf.com
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