| ??? 02/06/07 20:49 Modified: 02/06/07 20:55 Read: times Msg Score: +1 +1 Informative |
#132162 - Waitaminute ... those others didn\'t do that Responding to: ???'s previous message |
Kai Klaas said:
Erik said: I reported a problem with the first Atmel '51 at revision something like 'g'. (this was the pre e-mail days) Atmel replied by letter to the company (i.e. my boss got it) "whoever reported this is an idiot" (not in those words). This eventually led to me losing my job (they believed "the big company" over me). Lo and behold, in the errata for revision something like 's' the very same problem was included. That's the same position they took with respect to the situation I encountered. The key difference was that I was fully prepared to prove conclusively that (a) the >$1kUS evaluation board they sent us didn't function, (b) their MCU's SDRAM channel didn't work at all (c) their recommendations were totally wrong and had no chance of working, and (d) their much-touted bootstrap program didn't work. Ultimately, as in Erik's case, these were all proven and published in errata and their (the French design team's) product was withdrawn from the market. I took umbrage at their statement to the local FAE, in which they suggested that I was a fool because I didn't understand the ARM architecture, and that was why their CPU didnt work with SDRAM, or at their rated frequency, or with their nonexistent "bootloader", etc. Even their FAE was shocked, and subsequently recommended a competitor's product, which was not yet released. NEVER an Atmel in ANY of my designs again. Now I could add some similar stories I had with Philips, Analog devices and Texas Instruments and then we can break into a passion of tears... This is only a single event you had with a single person from Atmel, and it's entirely unprofessional to wail over it in an open and worldwide forum. Shall I and all members here keep my hands off Atmel's micros from now on, only because you didn't hit the right note on the phone long time ago, or whatsoever happened?? Kai I somehow doubt that. I've never, in my 40 or so years of engineering, encountered a level of corporate arrogance that parallels this. Their corporate position was that their product works perfectly, despite the fact that essentially nothing on it functioned as advertised, even though they couldn't provide even one working example. We've all had disagreements with the ways in which things were specified, or similar problems, but never in my long life have I ever encountered a corporation that said it was OK to specify Vcc as 0 volts and Vss as +3.3 which results in a fire on the PCB, and claimed that it was acceptable performance, and that's essentially equivalent to what they did. As a result, neither I nor any of my clients has used an ATMEL-anything, for any purpose, since then, nor would we do so, ever, under any circumstances. I don't use their programmable logic, memories, or MCU's, or any of their other products. RE |
