Comments about oreilly Programming Embedded Systems, 2nd Edition:

If you buy this book you're on your own!,

The book is well-written, technically sound

and the assignments are doable.

No tech support whatsoever from Eurotech.

Their tech-support is an answering machine that goes by the name of 'Russ from Eurotech'

I've told Mr. 'from Eurotech' twice that

their RTC demo errors out with "RTC_UIE_OFF:Invalid argument"... no response.

Not to mention the pricey kit ... $600??

There development kits available fro ARM7TDMI that are half the price...

Comments about oreilly Programming Embedded Systems, 2nd Edition:

I would easily have given this book a very good if it wasn't for the lousy hw sales channel.

I got 2 prices: 595 EUR or 595 USD depending on whom I asked. Obviously I picked the USD one. e-mails were continuously ignored until I just sat down and ordered one board (of course I got no response on the order, but when I called the sales person he said it was shipped which was correct).

Now I got the board and things are looking up.

Comments about oreilly Programming Embedded Systems, 2nd Edition:

The book seems fine except that buying the hardware is almost impossible. Arcom trade in the UK as Eurotech. When I rang them for prices on the Viper-Lite board (still advertised on the website) they said that it wasn't in production any more. I tried to contact someone else but was then told that I would need to buy 100 units and it would take 6 months to deliver! Very disappointing to think that this book (or at least this version) is less than 2 years old and is now completely useless as the hardware it describes cannot be purchased. A real shame as the book seems to be well written and interesting.

Comments about oreilly Programming Embedded Systems, 2nd Edition:

Yes, the price has skyrocketed. Someone has posted an errata to O'Reilly.

I spoke with Arcom/Eurotech (5/20/08) and they emailed a quote. The Viper-Lite dev kit lists for $997 and the 40% discount brings it to $598.

(Contact phone number in book is correct...email link on their web page isn't)

Comments about oreilly Programming Embedded Systems, 2nd Edition:

This book assumes nothing. I'm a communications Engineer with a new career in Inertial Navigation Systems. This book was a great intro course into what one can expect when starting to work with embedded systems.

I appreciate the basic approach: it is a gentle learning experience which you can read off-and-on over a few weeks if necessary. I recommend it and urge readers to keep a marking pen handy, it can be a good reference source while you get up to speed.

You DO NOT need a hands-on system to learn from this book.

Comments about oreilly Programming Embedded Systems, 2nd Edition:

First of all, this is a hands on book. It does provide an interesting read but you really need to get yourself the Arcom VIPER-Lite + Addon board combo which all the examples have been designed for. I got offered a discount on the hardware when I mentioned the book to the Arcom sales team (who, btw, are very friendly and helpful) and as of June 2007 the package cost £175 (ex. vat). However, this is really a great board and you should certainly take a look at it (Arcom's engineers rock btw) - http://www.arcom.com

My technique when reading this book was to first read through the book cover to cover before hacking away at the examples. I am currently working through the examples which can be downloaded from http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/embsys2/ and on that page there is a link to "examples". However, there is a lot of content in the examples files that simply isn't included within the pages of the book. Download and print off the source would be my advice.

As one of the other reviewers mentioned, the book does tend to gloss over some important aspects which I would have liked to have seen more of. More work on ISR's would have been brilliant and a load more on developing drivers under linux. I would have liked to have seen more advanced techniques to get the most out of my board - like recompiling the kernel and a greater discussion on redboot. A walkthrough of the contents of a mapfile would have saved me searching elsewhere and some lines in the example source code and makefiles are unreferenced at all in the book. You will need to have at least minimal exposure to standard gcc toolchains although the book does cover the fundamentals. Finally, I would have also liked to have seen more reference made to keeping deadlines when making programs executing under linux on the target. Whilst the version of linux on the arcom board uses pthreads and has therefore no direct knowledge of deadlines...I would have liked to have seen references made to techniques I can use in my programs to help prevent deadlines from failing. The book however does discuss this in more detail when discussing eCos however, as the board supplied by Arcom came with linux - this is practically irrelevant to me.

So now, the book uses two methods for building applications for the Arcom board (well, three if you include the eCos toolchain...but my board came with linux so i'll stick to that). You can either build your programs to be loaded directly at position x in RAM and then executed by the target directly (through redboot)...or, you can build your programs to be executed under linux. The examples packages at the link above contain only the toolchain to build programs for direct execution i.e. without linux control and these are easily installed on your development host. The linux cross compile toolchain to build applications for execution under linux on the target is included on the CD which comes with the development pack of the Arcom board. I haven't quite reached installing that toolchain on my host system yet but i'm definately looking forward to building my programs with it. Embedded linux - here I come...

I suppose what I was looking for when I bought this book was a manual for the Arcom board...and what I actually got was a detailed insight into programming embedded systems using the Arcom board as a hands on example. I'm happy with what I got...actually...I'm more than happy...if only you could see me right now :). Thank you Barr and Massa for a great book!

Comments about oreilly Programming Embedded Systems, 2nd Edition:

This book gives an excellent overview of programming embedded systems. It provides numerous examples of real-world hands-on embedded programming. I'd recommend that you have experience in C. Experience with operating systems concepts (such as interrupt service routines) would also be helpful.

Unlike usual programming books, you won't be able to pick up the book, download something, and start working. You'll need to have an embedded system that you can use. The authors use a system from Arcom that will run you about $300. I've not used it and was very wary about it when I first started reading, but as I read through the various examples I gained a great appreciation for the system. It looks like a great way to gain hands-on experience with embedded programming.

Before getting this book I read through the Lego Mindstorm NXT documentation and felt very lost. I didn't understand the symbols on the schematics and they used strange acronyms (like I2C and PWM). I also have an Iguanaworks USB infrared transceiver. I bought it to use in a MythTV system I am building. This book has enabled me to understand the schematics of both the Mindstorm and the transceiver as well as the documentation of both systems. I now feel ready to do my own embedded systems programming.

That said, I did not like everything in this book. They gloss over areas that I felt would have helped me (such as how to use a JTAG adapter and how to create an interrupt service routine under Linux). There are areas where the writing does not flow well and is redundant. The book switched from using an embedded x86 processor in the first edition to using an ARM processor in the second and there are still references to the old processor.

Even with its faults I am glad I got this book. It filled in many of the gaps that I have as a software engineer who is wanting to learn about embedded systems programming. I feel a whole new world has just been opened up to me and I can't wait to jump in.