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I mentioned I had a debug logging utility in my code, and everybody started laughing. At first, I did not know why they laughed.

The constant drive to announce improved products with new features can force frequent changes in both hardware and firmware.

The importance of proper management support for buffers – support in terms of status, interrupts, and errors.

To minimize the time hardware and firmware have to wait for each other, the proper use and sizing of buffers can help balance the load.

Because the ASIC had not been implemented per the standard, other components had to deviate from the standard to interface with it.

In a survey I conducted of several firmware engineers, lack of good documentation of hardware was the number one complaint.

The software programming guideline, Never Add Functionality Early, should be applied judiciously to hardware development.

A young hardware design team finished their design. If the chip didn't work, could they diagnose and solve the problem? They added more.

A behavior existed in other printer models. But a new printer’s chip did not have that support. A firmware workaround was created for it.

Interrupts are a fundamental part of chips, but there is no standard way of implementing them. This leads to several problems.