[filmscanners] Re: [filmscanners_Digest] filmscanners Digest for Fri 9 Aug,2002-Firnware

["Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@atkielski.com>]

TH writes:

> What is firmware?

Software that rarely changes.  Usually it is recorded in non-volatile but
erasable memory within a device at the factory, and since it is relatively
fixed, it usually appears as "hardware" to the user (that is, the influence
of the firmware is seen as hardware behavior).  If the firmware must later
be changed, usually a special program is used to do it, and this program
issues commands to the hardware to erase and replace the firmware with
something new.  To the user, this appears to change the behavior of the
hardware; but it's actually a software change (in software that is rarely
changed).

Thus, part of the behavior of a scanner's "hardware" when it is addressed by
a scanning program such as VueScan or NikonView is actually determined by
firmware in the scanner itself.  If you change the firmware, the "hardware"
behavior appears to change.

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