Re^5: Given my Raspberry Pi work, Happy Pi day Perlmonks!

help to understand what the datasheet is trying to tell you

Well, it seems the propaganda term "Lügenpresse" was originally invented to describe some datasheets. ;-)

At work, we've encountered a datasheet for a major brand chip (a kind of serial interface bridge) that was misleading or plain wrong in almost every single detail. Overall, it took three developers about six weeks and an insane amount of workarounds to get that *BEEEEP* chip working reliably. Looking back, it would have been faster, cheaper, and easier to implement that bridge in software on an ATtiny.

Alexander

--
Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)

Comment on Re^5: Given my Raspberry Pi work, Happy Pi day Perlmonks!

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Re^6: Given my Raspberry Pi work, Happy Pi day Perlmonks! by stevieb (Canon) on Mar 16, 2017 at 13:41 UTC
During this journey of learning, a few people have spoken to me about this, and in one case (I can't remember which chip it was), I had an issue configuring a two-byte register. It turned out that the datasheet said one thing, but in reality, four of the bits were backasswards. My frustration was through the roof, because I thought I was doing everything correctly, but being pretty new to the game, was ready to deskpalm my face. I don't remember exactly what led me to reversing the bits, but I can definitely understand what you're saying here even though my experience was a lot more mild than yours was. Lesson was (and is again re-inforced) to never take a datasheet at face value, and if one isn't getting proper results even though they're certain their code is right, the docs may not be completely representative of reality.	[reply]
Re^7: Given my Raspberry Pi work, Happy Pi day Perlmonks! by sn1987a (Curate) on Mar 16, 2017 at 16:18 UTC
This reminds me of some IBM documentation I heard about 25 years ago. The sample code in the manual did have the required effect. Their technical support said that is was just an example and didn't necessarily work.	[reply]
Re^6: Given my Raspberry Pi work, Happy Pi day Perlmonks! by jmlynesjr (Deacon) on Mar 17, 2017 at 21:15 UTC
It's nice to hear about your shared pain. LOL. We've all been there. Eventhough, with the Web it's much easier to find help than in the days of digging through the manuals or waiting for the vendor tech support to call you back or bump it up to corporate... James There's never enough time to do it right, but always enough time to do it over...	[reply]