Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on November 10, 2006 11:43 AM
Great work!
This reminds me of my younger days when sharing technology was the was to go. Radio Shack did and still does sell things like 300 in 1 electronic kits with all the schematics and tutorials. You could buy do-it-yourself computer kits that did come with all the schematics and instructions. You could modify (hack as it is now called) as much as you wanted.
Once I had a chip from Motorola that I want to used in a circuit design but I did not have the pinout or schematics for it. The electronic store I bought it from wanted $30 for the Motorola parts book. As a kid back then $30 was something I could only dream about. I went directly to Motorola's head office and spoke to a man there and explained what I want to do and asked if I could get a copy of the schematics for the chip. He said yes and returned about 15 minutes later with two very large parts books (I thing they weighted more than I did) and gave them to me for free. Shocked I asked about the price just to be sure and he said we don't sell them we give them away.
No undisclosed circuits. If you wanted to attached a make-shift rain gauge to your serial or parallel port you already had the pinout and voltage levels. This may seem trivial now since all serial and parallel ports are now standard and well documented but then things were different. Compare this now to say Adaptec's AIC9405w RAID controller. Just the commands used to connect to the unit and transfer data is a big secret. I guess they are afraid someone will clone their controller. Is it not cloning that made IBM PC type machines the most used today and IBM did not suffer from it. In fact I sure it made things a whole lot better for IBM in the long run.
I remember back then if you bought a transistor radio or transistor/vacuum tube Television the full schematics for the unit was glued to the inside cover of the unit. And if I want to grab a tube from the TV to use in my tube amplifier I could because I not only had the make and model of the tube but also the pinout and ratings.
(The vacuum tube is the predecessor of the Transistor. It had a glass case some what like a light bulb with elements that glowed when energised.)
This is what helped the innovations of the 70s and early 80s. Not like now where all the technology is secret to only the member of the "secret club". This is no different to hundred of years ago when only the elite of society got an education and the masses were kept ignorant. History showed that the reverse of this was more beneficial to all. But then again we are brain washed into thinking that we should always increase profits and gouge all we can no matter the cost. And in doing so we keep the consumer ignorant so that we can charge them a large service fee if they forget to press the power button. Or tell them they have to buy a new unit because we don't service that model anymore and we are not going to give out the specifications so that they can service it themselves. It seems we have gone backwards instead of forwards.
Sharing information and allowing other the be creative is always beneficial and as OpenSource as shown also profitable.
To the Chumby teams, thanks for reminding me of how I used to feel when the world seemed to be a more friendlier place. Good luck I know you will succeed.
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Posted by: Anonymous Coward on November 10, 2006 11:43 AMThis reminds me of my younger days when sharing technology was the was to go. Radio Shack did and still does sell things like 300 in 1 electronic kits with all the schematics and tutorials. You could buy do-it-yourself computer kits that did come with all the schematics and instructions. You could modify (hack as it is now called) as much as you wanted.
Once I had a chip from Motorola that I want to used in a circuit design but I did not have the pinout or schematics for it. The electronic store I bought it from wanted $30 for the Motorola parts book. As a kid back then $30 was something I could only dream about. I went directly to Motorola's head office and spoke to a man there and explained what I want to do and asked if I could get a copy of the schematics for the chip. He said yes and returned about 15 minutes later with two very large parts books (I thing they weighted more than I did) and gave them to me for free. Shocked I asked about the price just to be sure and he said we don't sell them we give them away.
No undisclosed circuits. If you wanted to attached a make-shift rain gauge to your serial or parallel port you already had the pinout and voltage levels. This may seem trivial now since all serial and parallel ports are now standard and well documented but then things were different. Compare this now to say Adaptec's AIC9405w RAID controller. Just the commands used to connect to the unit and transfer data is a big secret. I guess they are afraid someone will clone their controller. Is it not cloning that made IBM PC type machines the most used today and IBM did not suffer from it. In fact I sure it made things a whole lot better for IBM in the long run.
I remember back then if you bought a transistor radio or transistor/vacuum tube Television the full schematics for the unit was glued to the inside cover of the unit. And if I want to grab a tube from the TV to use in my tube amplifier I could because I not only had the make and model of the tube but also the pinout and ratings.
(The vacuum tube is the predecessor of the Transistor. It had a glass case some what like a light bulb with elements that glowed when energised.)
This is what helped the innovations of the 70s and early 80s. Not like now where all the technology is secret to only the member of the "secret club". This is no different to hundred of years ago when only the elite of society got an education and the masses were kept ignorant. History showed that the reverse of this was more beneficial to all. But then again we are brain washed into thinking that we should always increase profits and gouge all we can no matter the cost. And in doing so we keep the consumer ignorant so that we can charge them a large service fee if they forget to press the power button. Or tell them they have to buy a new unit because we don't service that model anymore and we are not going to give out the specifications so that they can service it themselves.
It seems we have gone backwards instead of forwards.
Sharing information and allowing other the be creative is always beneficial and as OpenSource as shown also profitable.
To the Chumby teams, thanks for reminding me of how I used to feel when the world seemed to be a more friendlier place. Good luck I know you will succeed.
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