STYLE: Is Firmware always Firmware?

Subject: STYLE: Is Firmware always Firmware?
From: "Jonathan Soukup" <JSoukup -at- at-track -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 12:45:40 -0600

Well we had another layoff last week and I am the last remaining tech writer at a company with still over 100 people. As you can guess, I inherited "a few" additional duties. I inherited all of the existing customer documentation and we're well on our way to our first document review.

The tech writer before me was in the process of circulating a document for comments and I'm getting a lot of comments where she made this awkward statement about "must contain firmware operating software release 1.01.00".

She referring to firmware that must be loaded into the product. Usually this is done by the manufacturer, but it can be done by the installer or customer. So my question is this, is firmware always firmware, or is firmware considered software when it's on a floppy disk and shipped to the customer.

The more I think about it, the more bizarre it gets. I think I'm going to just use the term "firmware" and keep it as simple as possible, but knowing the guys that review the document, someone's going to raise a fuss over this and try to make it more complicated than it is.

Any comments? I didn't find a reference in Microsoft's MOS.

Thanks,
Jonathan Soukup
jsoukup -at- at-track -dot- com

BTW, I took a 6 month break from reading this list and I survived, it was tough, but thank goodness for the local fishing and jeep forums I found on the web.


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