Dave Baker's WebLog : Design Principles

It's not what you've got, its what you do with it! Windows Embedded in the Enterprise - Free Webinar

davbaker — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 22:54:56 GMT

Embedded platforms are being increasingly used as part of enterprise solutions to help improve efficiency and drive down cost. If these type of solutions are of interest to you sign up for the free webinar "Windows Embedded Opportunities in Enterprise Organizations," will be held on June 28 at 8:00PM GMT. For further details and registration go here.

Big Book of BSP Goes Live!

davbaker — Wed, 23 May 2007 22:36:39 GMT

Check out Called the "Big Book of BSP" and hosted on the Channel 9 website. The wiki, specifically for developers of Windows CE and Windows Mobile board-support packages (BSP's), aims to provide "comprehensive information pertaining to Windows Embedded CE and Windows Mobile BSPs."

The wiki contains the knowledge on BSPs from within Microsoft and covers topics such as:

Introduction to BSPs
What you need to create a BSP
Features of a BSP
Board bringup
Advanced debugging topics for BSPs
Switching between debug and retail
How to know your BSP is done
How to get support for BSP development

The team encourages users of the the Big Book of BSP to participate in the evolution of its content. The wiki is now "open for direct edits," and can be found here.

Memory Marshalling in Windows CE 6.0

davbaker — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 18:15:00 GMT

Windows Embedded CE 6.0 introduced a new, "third generation" kernel. Unsurprisingly, changes to the kernel architecture have impacted the way system software such as drivers and servers access memory. Sue Loh has put together yet another great whitepaper that explains the new memory access procedures.

Check out the Windows CE Base team blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/ce_base/archive/2006/11/09/Memory-marshalling-in-Windows-CE.aspx

Does Windows XP Embedded really need 10,000 Components?

davbaker — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 18:12:00 GMT

Andy Allred wrote a very interesting piece in the XP Embedded Team’s blog around componentisation and whether we really need 12,000 components.

Is there a better way? Maybe it makes sense to "group" features together that don't have a lot of dependencies on other features. For example, "Instead of having several dozen components that comprise the Audio stack, why not just group them together and call it the Audio Feature Component?."

Such a strategy might work out to a couple hundred feature groups, the downside being that there will be some "footprint hit" for users who don't need every feature of a group. The upside being that you can get the system up and running faster and with higher confidence.

Andy invites your comments. Swing on over to the Embedded Team’s Blog and let them know your thoughts. http://blogs.msdn.com/embedded/archive/2006/12/04/10-000-or-200.aspx?CommentPosted=true

Selecting a Flash File System for Mobile Devices

davbaker — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 14:25:00 GMT

Although it is neither seen or touched by the user, Low-level, flash filesystem software provides critical functionality on many mobile devices, ensuring that data can be written to the storage media, accessed by the user, and read on demand. Check out this great whitepaper which discusses the issues involved in selecting an appropriate flash filesystem.

http://ct.enews.deviceforge.com/rd/cts?d=207-169-3-29-497-14668-0-0-0-1

Embedded Devices in the Enterprise

davbaker — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 19:59:00 GMT

I'm giving a short presentation (15 mins) tomorrow to a number of Partners and was wondering what I could cover in such a short period of time that would be useful - and help them stay awake...

I got to thinking about embedded devices in large enterprises where they are typically widely distributed and remotely managed. You know the type of thing, ATMs, Retail Tills, etc... In this case, platform functionality is important, but in equal measure the solution designer must also consider deployment, maintenance, security & integrity implications in their implemetations.

Rather than spill the beans for tomorrow's presentation - I'll treat these areas as conversation topics over the next couple of posts...

Let me know if there's anything else you'd like to see covered

- Dave