{"id":973,"date":"2008-08-02T02:02:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-02T09:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/imagecraft.wordpress.com\/?p=36"},"modified":"2008-08-02T02:02:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-02T09:02:00","slug":"in-the-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/imagecraft.com\/?p=973","title":{"rendered":"In the Beginning…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our first compiler product was a low cost ($39!!!) C compiler for the HC11. The ’11 was great for its time: the documentation is a standard that most CURRENT microcontroller documents could take lessons from; the chip was easy to use, even in the era of burning your own EEPROM and erasing them using UV light, and the HC11 E2 was a charmer since it has its own builtin 2K of EEPROM, back in the late 80s!<\/p>\n

But I digress, ImageCraft had an earlier beginning. Back in the days when I was in the graduate school, I got very interested in MIT’s Rodney Brook’s subsumption architecture (*) and I did my Master thesis on a subsumption based C kernel (demonstrated with a RC-converted robot named Ripley). Then I decided to see if I can commercialize the kernel. As with all product launches, the naming took longer than the development time (ok, I exaggerated), and the kernel ended up being called REXIS, short for REal time eXecutive for Intelligent Systems. I forgot exactly how it happened, but someone at the Canada Forestry paid us a lump sum of $1500 to port REXIS to the 68000. They were embarking on a decade long project to build autonomous forest tending robots and REXIS fitted the bill, and thus ImageCraft was born… They actually sent us a VHS tape of the robot in action. It’s a huge 4 legged walking robot, able to negotiate rough terrain. I wonder if the clip is on youtube \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

To close the story, it didn’t make much sense to sell a HC11 C kernel suitable for robotic uses when most roboticists\/students could not afford a $1500 compiler, so I decided to write and sell a low cost HC11 compiler…<\/p>\n

REXIS morphed into the simpler uExec, which we published in a Circuit Cellar article and is available on our website for several targets. One person added messaging API and another person ported it to the M16C. Unfortunately, I have not gotten these enhancements. In any case, I still have a soft spot for REXIS and I may resurrect it in a more modern form one of these days.<\/p>\n

(*) funny enough, Brook’s eventual company started by one of his students, iRobot, is one of our customers…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our first compiler product was a low cost ($39!!!) C compiler for the HC11. The ’11 was great for its time: the documentation is a standard that most CURRENT microcontroller documents could take lessons from; the chip was easy to use, even in the era of burning your own EEPROM and erasing them using UV light, and the HC11 E2 was a charmer since it has its own builtin 2K of EEPROM, back in the late 80s! But I digress, ImageCraft had an earlier beginning. Back in the days when I was in the graduate school, I got very interested […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[84,143,145,170],"class_list":["post-973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","tag-hc11","tag-robot","tag-rtos","tag-subsumption-architecture"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imagecraft.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imagecraft.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imagecraft.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imagecraft.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imagecraft.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/imagecraft.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imagecraft.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imagecraft.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imagecraft.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}