[VERY OT] Is everybody here over 35? If not, do you know what Usenet is?

I've been having lots of trouble with local delinquents (or neighbors) puncturing my tires, but really I was thinking more of my wife's (15- month-old) car... I told her to take it in because the CEL was on and the brake pedal was bottoming out without actually locking up the wheels (and no it does not have ABS or ESC). They replaced everything from the gas cap to the master cylinder. I think the CEL cleared itself magically but it took forever until the brake problem was "fixed" (and it's still not great, only better). I hate flowchart employees.

You might. Many designs use a simple RC as a POR circuit because it's cheaper than a supervisor IC. Who knows if the BOD feature in the micro - if any - is enabled? Leaving it unplugged allows the big caps in the SMPS, and the bypass caps, to discharge far enough for the POR pulse to meet the micro's guaranteed reset conditions.

Okay, well then have you set up your newsreader with your "user name" (probably email address) and password, and told it to "do authorization" by whatever method(s) it has? No doubt it'll be faster to go through all the permutations in the newsreader than to get someone at the ISP who understands and can help.

Its in the link within your post - Virgin Media -

. Their business services are under the name NTL Telewest Business, but its all the same company and the billing is under Virgin Media all the same. .

They all crash a lot... BTW most use Linux... any correlation?

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So not only don't you get on with 90% of commercial companies in your field of work (especially the sales and support people) but you have problems with your neighbours as well... There seems to be a pattern developing here.

I doubt they were "flow chart employees" sounds like they wanted to see what they could get away with. (You haven't upset them as well as your neighbours and all the commercial companies you work with?) Is everyone out to get you or are you just paranoid?

BTW if the problem with the breaks was that simple why didn't you do it yourself?

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It is not so simple these days on the modern cars. The Mechanic knows how cars work and can do things on the older cars but the more modern ones you need to plug into with a computer to reset and change settings that control the mechanics. (90% of the cost of a modern car is in the SW according to Ford) .

One car needed things reset after you changed the oil filter. The engine would automatically compensate for a less efficient oil filter over time. It took time to automatically reset if you put a new filter on thus causing engine problems..

The problem is the software engineers....

Yes we are the problem! Who do you thing designed and build all the software in the car that told them the battery was at fault?

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Remind me to tell you the story one day of why us paying a monthly fee for a fixed IP address does not apparently mean (according to our ISP) that our IP address will stay the same, and in fact they can change it as and when they please without telling us.....but thats a whole other story ;o)

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Regards,
Richard.

+ http://www.FreeRTOS.org Designed for Microcontrollers
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Deja vu! I had exactly the same experience. At the time I was using Tesco who just resell Virging Media DSL. A very dim light bulb went on in the support *manager's* head when I said Goggle Groups! But I had similar problems when changing ISP and trying to confirm that they provided a usenet news server.

Peter

To be fair, I think the unplugged time is to ensure that various network timeouts have timed out and the hardware at the exchange end has properly reset. Actually, I know it's for that reason.

The fact that they insist on verious odd-sounding permutations is because that's what it says in their script and also because smart-arse users who think they know better will do something they think is equivalent to unplugging the router from the phone socket, but isn't. Unplugging the plug from the mains is pretty much fail-safe, because if the user reports that the plug is out, it's out unless they're lying. Switching it off at the socket isn't as safe - is the switch working? Is the user mistaken about which way up the switch is? Did they flick the right switch? The whole point of the irritating scrips is to try to make solving the problem as idiot-proof as possible for the idiots on both ends of the telephone line.

What you need to remember is that firtly there are a hell of a lot of numpties out there, and that 95% of calls *are* solved by the script monkeys. It'd be a complete wast of everybody's money to have properly trained techs answering each and every call. Sure, it's irritating for anyone with a clue, and I suspect the ratio of clue to no-clue is pretty high in this ng, but it's very very low out in the real world. You unfortunately have to play the game to get through to the people who know what they're doing - just because you say you know what you're doing doesn't help - most (or at least many) users are sure they know what they're doing, particularly if they're blokes and it's computer related, but the reality is that most of them are just numpties.

Nobby

My rule: Buy the car with the least amount of electronics and firmware there is. Meaning less problems and lower in cost.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

That used to happen a lot on AT&T but hasn't in a few months now. The only remedy is to call and wait it out. Sometimes the problem with their server goes away without calling them, sometimes not.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

Usually when these authorization failures occur there isn't much that can be done by the user. It means that the authentication process that has worked ever since now doesn't. Unless the ISP has recently gone through a merger or things changed otherwise it usually meant (at least in my cases it did) that something at their server was busted.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

The topper here so far was a return question: "Usenet? Isn't that the web place where old professors with long beards hang out?"

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

IMHO: 1) Low-end STBs don't use linux, but a proprietary RTOS. 2) I assume that by "crash" you mean UI becoming unresponsive. This is not necessarily OS/software hang. 3) The OS has tiny fraction to contribute to the product instability. Start with silicon errata, silicon manufacturer supplied libraries,

3rd party middleware. End with STB manufacturer in-house code.

So, to answer your question: No, there isn't correlation. And linux would be the last thing to blame.

... snip ...

It seems to me that if you are making 15 kilobyte posts on Usenet or Email (both of which should be plain text) you are putting unnecessary load on everything. I except binary newsgroups.

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 [mail]: Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net) 
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Fair enough

You mean they are not tested? OR people just don't bother?

It seems you are blaming everything and anything other than the RTOS for failures. Point 3 seems a real cop out

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I have seen cases of various types of equipment where the production test gets abbreviated, consumer equipment is often based on the principle if it goes really wrong

either the unit is power cycled

or the customer (and their setup) is blamed

or the customer buys a new model

The OS even a properiatory one can be quite a bit of the problem, but with consumer devices the base problem is the system design. The most seen problem with set top box and similar consumer devices is the unable to cope with real world issues like being unable to handle more than one button push on a remote control device, without locking up

User interface

the power up/out of standby sequence

the whole unit

Personally I view the system design (including OS suitability and shortcomings) as the biggest problem for consumer devices.

Mainly because every manufacturer still appears to be trying to bring out a new model every week.

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Paul Carpenter          | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
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Even if the RTOS works perfectly, but if the system is running several megabytes of badly tested code in a common address space, there is not much the RTOS can do to improve stability. Just remember early Windows

3.x versions :-).

If the project can not afford a processor with a proper MMU and RTOS supporting running tasks in separate address spaces, the result is pretty easy to predict, unless there is a large effort to make each task error free.

Paul

They are usually not designed properly, not tested properly AND manufacturers don't bother that much. Others pointed out that main problem is bad design, to which I'll add (in the context of STBs) and bad components.

Read again - "The OS has tiny fraction to contribute ...". Honestly, I don't see your point. Collect data about STB crashes/hangs and tell us what % of them is because of OS.