VOL. 12, NO. 13
December, 1999

Table of Contents

FEATURES

Cover Story

Software can get sick, according to the author, and should be inoculated. This article offers several rules to increase the quality of the software product by helping developers define a verifiable and enforceable defensive programming standard for their software development teams.

Using Flash in an 8051-Based System
by Tony Gray
Integrating the boot loader with the application is one of the challenges in a flash-based design. This article describes how the boot loader jumps to the application, how the application jumps to the boot loader, and how to handle interrupts and the reset vector in a medium-sized 8051-based design.

How to Reduce State Machine Complexity
by Charles E. Hine
In event-driven state machines, delegation is the concept of using multiple state variables to select a block of code to field a given event. Properly executed, delegation gives you a technique for simplifying your state machine designs.

Internet Appliance Design

Connecting...
For the Love of the Game
by Michael Barr
While the other features in this section cover technologies you're more likely to buy than develop, the author sticks to the basics here in the second of his three-part discussion on checksums.

Introduction to TCP/IP
by Thomas Herbert
You probably use TCP/IP every day. But do you really understand how it works? This two-part article presents sufficient information for you to integrate a stack into your next design.

Real-Time Extensions to the Java Platform
by Steve Furr
As it stands now, neither the Java language nor the Java Virtual Machine is compatible with truly real-time systems. However, extensions to the Java specifications are now being made to make Java a better language for real-time programming. This article describes what's needed.

Embedded Internet Tools
New Internet appliance design products.

Columns