Clemens Koller wrote:
What can be done *illegally* [to produce a programming / debugging
interface with JTAG ICE MkII / Dragon functionality]?
Is reengineering debug interfaces illegal of a product I bought?!
IANAL, but it is my impression that *copying* a JTAG ICE MkII or AVR Dragon
would be illegal under copyright law as Atmel retain all rights to the
design by not expicitly giving them away. I think what you have to do to be
legal is double-blind reverse engineering. One group disects, say, the AVR
Dragon and writes down what it does without saying how it does it. A second
group who have not seen the AVR Dragon then independently implements that
functionality. This could get tricky because an important thing that the
AVR Dragon does is load up its firmware from the AVR Studio distribution.
Then, my idea was to extend i.e. the USBisp with a debugwire
functionality (if leagal 8-) ...
In my opinion, this would be a worthy project if it could be done.
Graham.
P.S. When I previously wrote "... people only build their own ..." it would
have been better if I'd written "... people only design their own from
scratch ...". I didn't mean to imply that people don't build programming
interfaces themselves from existing designs. They do. My point was that
there is no need to create another design unless it offers something new.
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