Embedded Components and Tools Blog Center

Ron Fredericks writes: The HHP-16K EPROM Emulator allows application code to be read by Hewlett-Packard’s (HP’s) HP-41 calculator. Instead of inserting a small pre-built module into one of the four module bays of the calculator, such as the PPC ROM module discussed in one of my previous blog posts, this unit allows a person to use custom built programs previously stored into EPROMs (Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory devices) using software development tools and an EPROM burner.

Figure 1: HPP-16K Emulator Connected to HP-41 Calculator

Photo by Ron Fredericks using Canon EOS-10D 34mm fluorite lens, UV Filter, 1.5s & f/22 @ ISO 100, on tripod, from Embedded Components’ HP lab collection.

Business Development using EPROM

The HHP-16K represents, a stepping-stone from source code to mass marketing through the use of HP’s commercial software development tools and it’s professional services team. Advertisement and promotion of HP’s professional services to productize HP ROM modules from EPROMs could be found within HP’s own software development tools, and in newsletters – newsletters published by HP and by independent self-assembling developer communities such as national and international versions of the HP Computing Club or HPCC.org. HP’s fee for this service was not trivial, often HP computer clubs would collect donations from 100’s or 1000’s of their members to raise the $20,000 to $60,000 (in 1980’s dollars) to produce these ROM modules for their members – all before the Internet.

This emulator is an example of an important design pattern for modern day software developers forming into ecosystems around mass marketed smart consumer devices!

A typical consumer device in today’s market often has gigabytes of flash memory or other extensions via cellular networks, enterprise networks, or WI-FI Internet access, that behave just like this old 16 kilobyte emulator. With this design pattern – developers can improve the consumer’s experience on popular devices by adding new software applications, middleware, content, and development tools. While at the same time, developers gain significant new business development opportunities for themselves, content providers, software tools vendors, professional services teams, and device manufacturers alike.

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Photo by Ron Fredericks using Canon EOS-10D 34mm fluorite lens, circular polarizer, 1.5s & f/22 @ ISO 100, on tripod, from Embedded Components’ HP lab collection.

Ron Fredericks writes: I envision the day when community software engineering projects are commonplace for embedded devices. Like the PPC ROM demonstrated back in 1981.

What follows is a review of the PPC ROM community development project – a first for smart mobile devices, then an offer to help others in moving this great body of open source professional tools to modern devices: comment on this post if you are interested in this project or in community development of software for embedded devices in general.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have powerful new applications built on top of our routers, digital recorders, HDTV’s; or even industrial process monitor and control systems, or lab instruments; hey how about our cars and public transport vehicles? No I don’t mean that you buy a new device or car with new applications pre-loaded by the device manufacturer and shipped with the soon to be obsolete device – I mean groups of experts organizing into communities with other experts to design, develop, test, document, package, and deliver new software solutions onto devices for their own members’ sales channels. Does this sound far fetched?

Community development around open-source software such as Java, the Linux operating system, or Mozilla’s Firefox web browser have emerged as reusable project management solutions to complex software engineering issues – See Asa Dotzler’s Job Morph: Herding Cats to see how Mozilla motivates workers who aren’t actually on the payroll.. So I know the engineering community is ready for a new challenge – one that has already been solved back in 1981 – one that affects the speed of technology reuse around the globe today.

Photo by Ron Fredericks using the same settings as the previous photo, of his favorite mobile smart device.

So let me share with you a project I recently discovered. It’s embodied in a user’s manual published in 1981 by a community of engineers – no, not your typical product manual ticked out on a company payroll. The forward describes a first-of-its-kind effort behind this user manual, and the embedded software it documents. The author expresses his excitement in being part of the “first community developer” project for a smart mobile computing device and it is so similar to the smart devices we use today! Did I mention that Linux, or even community networks like web and email didn’t exist back then? How did they do it? Can we learn from their effort and apply this community project, or its method, for today’s embedded devices? I think the answer is yes – with a little help from the embedded operating system suppliers’ communities and some innovative hardware device manufacturers. The embedded operating system, software community project management, and smart device platforms have come to a wonderful cross-road that truly supports community software development as a ripe low-hanging opportunity for us today.

The forward to this 500 page user manual describes the struggle and accomplishment of 100 developers who formed their own community project to develop a “ROM” or read-only memory module they called a “PPC ROM” that plugs into an HP personal computer that is now 25 years obsolete called an HP-41. The “PPC” reference is to the names – Personal Programmable Calculator, or Personal Programmer’s Club, or Prolific and Productive Computing – as well as the PPC Calculator Journal that was the herald for the HP calculator’s developer community back in the day. Similar to the commonplace e’zines we read, or get spammed with today. But different because the taxonomy created by today’s almost endless stream of eBlasts, tagged content, blogs, forums, and RSS feeds by themselves don’t create an engineers’ sense of community. The spontaneous motivation to organize into a sense of community requires a mood that has only been created by a real person – a person that shifts a group of developers’ paradigm . (more…)

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