RE: [avr-gcc-list] Allocating variables to a fixed address

[Weddington, Eric]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: 
> address@hidden 
> [mailto:address@hidden
> org] On Behalf Of Robert von Knobloch
> Sent: Monday, May 11, 2009 7:57 AM
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: [avr-gcc-list] Allocating variables to a fixed address
> 
> David Kelly wrote:
> > Sounds to me as if you are making the "bootloader" too big 
> and should
> > simply link an entire application for every possible 
> target. What you
> > are doing would make more sense if the loadable modules 
> could run out of
> > RAM.
> That would be no use, the loadables must be non-volatile.
> This is a tester that will be sent to a factory (somewhere).
> When a new product is to be tested, I can e-mail them the test routine
> which they then burn into flash (each of these is 0x900 
> bytes, there can
> be up to 0x0a of them).

Why is this method superior to having a regular bootloader, and you have N 
applications, where each application is the individual test routine and the 
common portion? Why do you have create this custom interface which has its own 
set of problems? Alternatively, creating a custom Makefile to handle building 
10 different applications is certainly easier in comparison.