[Oberon] PO2013 - Real time measurement

[Paul Reed]

> ARM Sitara because of that. Well, if you think that Blackfin was tough
> then try Sitara instead. Sitara gives a whole new meaning to the word
> "nightmare".

It never ceases to amaze me how supposedly-professional hardware designers
manage to mess up actual hardware for all its users.

I suspected John was talking about the SPI host interface, and my
experience is as ugly as all of yours (and you have my sympathy).  Even if
you look at the Raspberry Pi's Broadcom chip it's a scandal that it's
still so badly documented yet fully targeted towards education (though
perhaps not actual computer science, more plugging things together with
Python scripts it seems - but anyway).

It's all a long way from the "ideals" that Prof. Wirth often pointed out
hardware designers should follow whenever possible, and not make excuses. 
So many lost opportunities!

The pure joy of designing my own, simple SPI host interface to add to the
RISC5 machine was not borne out of some academic perfectionism, but more
the maniacal laughter of one who finally had the power to right a few of
those wrongs encountered in brutal experience... :)

Cheers,
Paul