[snipped stuff about design before test which I don't particular have an argument with today] > > I don't think anyone has yet found a solution to the general class of > > NP-complete problems. > > Please give an example of an NP-complete problem which must be > solved by firmware in the electronics of an ATA disc drive. > Not many traveling salesmen in my discs... How do you tell what the tech who strapped the options meant? And that is why CS generates a lot of different reactions. Each manufacturer uses different reductions of the guess set, and often the manufacturer's guesses for a paticular set of electronics matches the tech's guesses, and often they don't. More specifically, with CS the manufacturer has an algorithm to guess what the tech meant, and that algorithm is applied to a problem for which the drive cable does not provide enough resources to solve. (not enough inputs possible) It's not exactly NP complete, but it does bear the same characteristic of complexity exceeding the available computer resources. IMO, YMMV
