Some of us had been hoping for something like that for the D in the past.
Now what would be extremely great would be if Pentax made the firmware
open source, at least for cameras they are not making anymore, like
the istD. That would create a sizeable following of geeks, would
ensure the appearance of really cool things done with their cameras,
and could only benefit Pentax--I believe greatly.
Heck, I'd even pay some money for a firmware developer kit if there was one.
j
Right.... not likely (although it would be quite nifty if they
did). I've suggested that in some of my queries to Pentax. I'm sure
that after the numerous "telephone-game" language translations, my
comments are either rendered useless or just forgotten altogether.
I think the problem is that geeks like myself *KNOW* what firmware
is and think of it more like software... something that's upgradeable and
long-term viable. Things like consumer electronics (even with upgradeable
firmware) are generally still considered a "product" by the manufacturers.
What you (and I) would like is more like a "platform," not a "product."
I did a little binary poking awhile back on the firmware image to
see how feasible it might be to reverse engineer a few things. It'd
probably be pretty rough... found this contained within:
Softune REALOS/FR is Realtime OS for FR Family, based on micro-ITRON
COPYRIGHT(C) FUJITSU LIMITED 1994-1999
... proprietary RTOS.
-Cory
--
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* Cory Papenfuss *
* Electrical Engineering candidate Ph.D. graduate student *
* Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University *
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