On 10/29/2010 4:04 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>> More specifically, given that Windows should never, ever, under any
>>> circumstances, be running on a single-function device like this, why
>>> are all the device drivers being written for Windows?
>>
>> What would you run instead?
>
> How about just writing the few dozen lines of C is actually takes to
> prod a few bits in the framebuffer, write some stuff on the screen, talk
> to the card reader a bit, and make the dispenser chuck out some money?

There's a reason the embedded system has an OS. Sure, if it were running 
a microcontroller, you'd probably be doing just that, and spending a 
huge amount of man-hours writing code to transfer bitmaps from 
advertisers to the display, creating a font (or reading a well known 
font format) to display information on the screen, to do basic drawing 
functions for HMI stuff, to interact with the flash drive on a hardware 
level, to deal with the TCP/IP protocol through an embedded NIC so it 
can communicate with the machine, or to program the UART to communicate 
with the one sensor that sends back everything in RS232. To handle 
encryption and everything else.

Real simple. :)

> OK, you're right, it probably *is* faster to take some code that
> somebody else already wrote. But I still think grabbing the relevant
> parts of (say) the Linux kernel is going to be quicker and easier than
> porting the entire Windows OS (most of which you don't need) to a new
> platform and trying to make it work...

Always... There's a lot to it, actually. Sure, the hardware vendor may 
choose to embed Linux as their OS of choice. But the more common choice 
is embedded Windows, so that's what gets used.

-- 
~Mike

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