Once upon a time, about two years ago, I was thinking of putting together an 8052.com CD-ROM on which I was planning to put copies of the tutorials, news entries, code library, and the datasheets for 8052-compatible MCUs. I even went so far as to obtain signed permission to include the datasheets from most of the semiconductor firms. I never proceeded with that because I had other more pressing projects and due to my concern that the cost of shipping was probably going to be more than the price of the CD-ROM itself, at least for most of the world. It didn't seem a very cost-effective way to make the material available. This is compounded by the possibility of the CD-ROMs being damaged in-transit and having to deal with the returns/exchanges where the primary cost will again be the shipping.

The idea of producing such a CD-ROM with the forum archived on it is something I hadn't considered. In theory it could be a good idea. My question there would be how to make the archive searchable on the CD-ROM. The "search" function on the website is interactive and runs a search program that searches the site and message forum in real-time. I don't see how that could be duplicated on a CD-ROM version unless it was accompanied by a special program--but that would make it platform-dependent.

I'd be interested in hearing other feedback on the CD-ROM idea. Do others think this would be useful? If it were done, in what format should the message forum be included for ease-of-reading and ease-of-searching?

Regards,
Craig Steiner
8052.com Webmaster