With the programmer hard- and software taken care of in the previous episode, the last components missing are the compiler suites for the various platforms. Once we’ve taken a look at the GCC variants for the Atmel AVR and Texas Instruments MSP430 and the SDCC for the Microchip PIC families of microcontrollers, our set of tools specific to microcontroller programming is complete.
BIVBlog #39: Using the Microcontroller Programmers
In this third episode of the microcontroller tutorial I show how to use the microcontroller programmer hardware and software to install new software on the various microcontrollers.
BIVBlog #38: Microcontroller Programmers and Evaluation Target Boards
In the second episode of the microcontroller tutorial I take a look at the various programmers and target boards I want to use for the tutorial. While the target boards are only really needed to get started, the programmers(/debuggers) are going to stay with us throughout the entire series.
BIVBlog #37: Microcontroller Toolchain Bootstrap Fundamentals
Getting started with microcontrollers isn’t exactly easy. This video is the first of a series of episodes that give a somewhat non-standard introduction; not only do I take a comparative approach, examining the Atmel AVR, Microchip PIC and Texas Instruments MSP430 families in parallel, I also use Linux and various open source development tools (with various limitations and extra handicaps) rather than the manufacturer-provided ones, and I even try to write code in a way compatible between the architectures.
BIVBlog #36: News from RIPE-72
The RIPE-72 meeting in København (Copenhagen (Denmark)) from March 23–27, 2016 showed a remarkable prominence of IPv6 related matters. Yes, we (as in “the Internet community”) do make progress, and the presentations clearly show so, which is a Good Thing[TM] to happen.
Not quite as inspiring is the fact that the IP address market is rapidly spinning out of control. The strain on the community, and the policy decisions made under pressure from the address peddlers^Wbrokers in both the address policy working group and the NCC general assembly, clearly show that IPv4 is rapidly approaching an “every man for himself” stage.
BIVBlog #35: Thin Clients and Beyond
If thin clients like the SunRays I’ve shown in BIVBlog #34 were so appealing to users, system administrators and managers alike, then why did they stay a niche product? And why does nobody care about them anymore?
The answers to these questions are interesting not only with regard to thin clients, or SunRays, but to the design of virtually any IT system that is meant for real world end users.
BIVBlog #34: Playing Around with SunRay 1 Thin Clients
During an IPv6 training I held last year I was given two Sun Microsystems SunRay 1 thin clients. I give them a closer look, explain why they caused so much excitement when they hit the market, and tell about the problems I ran into trying while trying to get the server side to work.
BIVBlog #33: ICMPv6 (ICMP for IPv6) Filtering
Filtering ICMP packets for IPv6 (or ICMPv6, or ICMP6, depending on the texts you read) is somewhat daunting at first. But once you’ve thrown your fears and possibly dogmatic attitude towards ICMP out the window, setting up a reasonable packet filter configuration is actually fairly straightforward.
This video is basically a translated re-run of a presentation I’ve held at the Heise/DE-CIX IPv6 Conference here in Frankfurt (Germany) last year (2014) on special request by Carsten Schmoll of Fraunhofer FOKUS in Berlin (also here in Germany).
The slides are available here.
BIVBlog #32: Getting rid of the FTDI chip in the ARRGH board (and elsewhere)
Some crazy things have happened since the previous episode: There were rather mysterious test results with different Zener diodes that took me some time to figure out, I’m actively joining forces with the Cryptech project and I’ve ordered the first generation of proper test PCBs among other things.
BIVBlog #31: More news on the Hardware Random Number Generator
Some crazy things have happened since the previous episode: There were rather mysterious test results with different Zener diodes that took me some time to figure out, I’m actively joining forces with the Cryptech project and I’ve ordered the first generation of proper test PCBs among other things.