[Arm-netbook] need help! getting a bit overwhelmed on lists.oshwa.org

[Christopher Havel]

I don't know how helpful this is, but here are my usual definitions. For
the record, I'm a hardware kinda guy.

* If I can touch it, it's hardware.
* If it's made of code/programming, and it's on computer media, inside a
computer, or in a ROM chip that runs the system, it's software, *except*...
* ...if it's in a chip that isn't a ROM (or acting as ROM), it's firmware.
* ...if it's in a ROM chip (or a chip acting as ROM), *and* it's not got
the controlling program for the entire system, it's also firmware.
* ...if it's hardcopy, it's of course a program listing.
* ...if it's not a binary, it's of course source code.

"Acting as a ROM" covers Flash memory (which is technically nonvolatile
RAM, aka NVRAM) and systems that (stupidly IMO) use battery-backed static
RAM instead of a real ROM -- and other similar schemes that I'm not aware
of.

The 'if it's in a ROM chip and it runs the system, it's software' idea
covers systems that run an OS from ROM, whether or not they act as one
would recognize a computer in the modern sense. (It specifically excludes
the PC BIOS, though, and things like it.) That covers eg the Commodore 64
--and, in fact, most late-'70s and '80s computers-- but it also covers the
6502-based system I'm using to learn a bit about how those are programmed
at an assembly level, even though *that* system's entire purpose and
function is to push a hard-coded ASCII message to a weird TTL-serial LCD I
own. Some argument could be made that I should shut up and toss these use
cases in with firmware, but for some reason I can't adequately explain,
that somehow doesn't feel right.
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