On Nov 21, 12:27 am, Anton Erasmus <nob...@spam.prevent.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Nov 2007 19:13:28 -0800 (PST), steve
>
> <bungalow_st...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >On Nov 20, 6:01 am, "johnstokes30" <johnstoke...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> hi
> >> i am new here.  i would like to learn embedded programming on a very well
> >> established microcontoller.  I know that PICs are becoming more popular
> >> but can someone tell me of a controller that is popular in industry for
> >> several years (8 or 16 bit) and also has products available that i can use
> >> to learn such as demo kits. motorola 68XX? Atmel? 8051?
>
> >> many thanks
> >> john
>
> >I would suggest a 32 bit ARM, for $20 you can be up and running with a
> >C complier and eval board in a few hours (Analog devices in my case)
>
> Getting interrupts going, especially nested interrupts, is not easy on
> an ARM for a newbie.

just use the examples given as templates, newbies don't (shouldn't)
have to write anything from scratch

Ulf Samuelsson wrote:

>>>With the AVR, you need (want) the following tools.
>>>
>>>1) gcc C compiler  - or IAR. Some like Imagecraft.
>>>2) AVR Studio
>>>3) STK500 development board
>>>4) JTAG-ICE Mk II.
>>>
>>>If you want a real cheap environment, then you can try out the AVR Dragon
>>>which is a low cost, low featur combination of STK500 + JTAGICE Mk II
>>>but only works for chips with 32 kB flash or less.
>>
>> Can you clarify "only works for chips with 32 kB flash or less" ?
> 
> 
> The AVR Dragon is a JTAG emulator combined with an application area.
> It is just a PCB not mounted in plastic.
> You probably want to solder a socket of some kind in the application area.
> The part downloads the code into a SRAM which is limited to 32 kB.

Now I am more confused. Code-Sram ?
The FLASH AVR's cannot execute code from SRAM ?
- or is that some temp storage ? Why does it need SRAM ?

It DOES use the real silicon for emulation, right ?


> 
> 
>>- so that means the JTAG-ICE Mk II therein, is not going to also work with 
>>an AVR32, for example ? Then what - you buy another JTAG-ICE Mk II ?  How 
>>do you then tell them appart ?
> 
> 
> I think you have misunderstood something
> Look up AVR Dragon on the Atmel website.
> 
> I dont think you want to use the AVR Dragon as an emulator for the AVR32.

Yes, I did - I took "is a low cost, low feature combination of STK500 + 
JTAGICE Mk II" rather too literally.

I thought you meant it included a JTAGICE Mk II, but I can see
when looking at a photo, it is quite a different animal.
Rather than follow others lead with USB-Stik debug, where the Stick is
generally usefull for wider debug, Atmel have done this a little 
differently.

Better/smarter  would have been a compact, low cost USB link that could 
be used on ALL Atmel products, and AVR daughter cards, for programming, 
debug, and production.

Web info is currently very sparse.

-jg

>>
>> With the AVR, you need (want) the following tools.
>>
>> 1) gcc C compiler  - or IAR. Some like Imagecraft.
>> 2) AVR Studio
>> 3) STK500 development board
>> 4) JTAG-ICE Mk II.
>>
>> If you want a real cheap environment, then you can try out the AVR Dragon
>> which is a low cost, low featur combination of STK500 + JTAGICE Mk II
>> but only works for chips with 32 kB flash or less.
>
>  Can you clarify "only works for chips with 32 kB flash or less" ?

The AVR Dragon is a JTAG emulator combined with an application area.
It is just a PCB not mounted in plastic.
You probably want to solder a socket of some kind in the application area.
The part downloads the code into a SRAM which is limited to 32 kB.

>
> - so that means the JTAG-ICE Mk II therein, is not going to also work with 
> an AVR32, for example ? Then what - you buy another JTAG-ICE Mk II ?  How 
> do you then tell them appart ?

I think you have misunderstood something
Look up AVR Dragon on the Atmel website.

I dont think you want to use the AVR Dragon as an emulator for the AVR32.

>
>
>  'Low feature' means what ? - just that 32K ceiling, or do other things
> not work either ?

The emulation feature is only limited to 32kB, the low feature comment
is really compared to what you get on an STK500.

>
>  Seems a little strange having a ceiling on an ICE. ST don't mention any
> on their STM32 Ice ?


-- 
Best Regards,
Ulf Samuelsson
This is intended to be my personal opinion which may,
or may not be shared by my employer Atmel Nordic AB 

In article <9b99502e-2d82-4db8-a6a9-2dabe4cd2b3d@w28g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>, Eric <englere_geo@yahoo.com> writes:
> On Nov 20, 9:01 am, "johnstokes30" <johnstoke...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> i am new here.  i would like to learn embedded programming on a very well
>> established microcontoller.  I know that PICs are becoming more popular
>> but can someone tell me of a controller that is popular in industry for
>> several years (8 or 16 bit) and also has products available that i can use
>> to learn such as demo kits. motorola 68XX? Atmel? 8051?
> 
> I agree with Grant that the msp430 is terrific but I'd recommend the
> AVR family for beginners.
> 
> Although I've used 68hc12 for years I have some concerns about this
> for new people. The 68hc08 is not friendly to newbies.
> 

[I'm a professional programmer, but a hobbyist when it comes to electronics.]

When I started out with microcontrollers, I started with the HC08 and I
actually found the HC08 to be easy to learn, but it's not well supported
under Linux, so I had to write a programmer for it.

Note that if you use Windows, there's a free Codewarrior package to get
you started, so for a Windows using newcomer the HC08 may be an option.

I am now switching to the AVR, because of a lack of capability within the
HC08 for my more advanced requirements. [But it's annoying that, unlike the
HC08, you can't get a AVR with USB device in PDIP. (And yes, I know that
I've mentioned this before. :-))]

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980's technology to a 21st century world

On Nov 21, 3:47 am, "johnstokes30" <johnstoke...@gmail.com> wrote:
> hi
> thanks for alot of good advice.  I have looked further and decided
> upon the avr micrcontroller to start off.
>
> there is a lot of demand in the UK for ARM engineers.  Is it possible
> to obtain a development board for this brand?
> I have been on their website and again as a beginner it is very
> confusing?
> Oh yes i have very good c programming skills so this is not a problem
> for me.
> thanks
> john

I'm a little confused.  You say you have decided to learn the AVR line
of processors and then you ask about ARM tools.  Was one a typo?  Or
maybe both and you really meant to say you are going with the MSP430
line of parts...  ;^)

If you are picking ARM parts, you then have the issue of which ARM and
which brand.  The cores on all of the are similar, but the different
variants have differences in instruction sets and they are all
integrated differently with the peripherals... not to mention the
difference in peripherals.

Most popular for smaller projects is the ARM7 at this time.  The
Cortex M3 flavor of the ARM MCU is new, but specifically designed for
embedded work.  I expect that over the next year or so, the CM3 will
be more widely used and will become the dominant flavor of ARM at the
lower end.  I would also suggest the parts from Luminary Micro.  They
have some very nice, low cost development kits with several flavors of
evaluation tools which are very useful for learning the ropes.

The ARM9 is a faster processor and will run Linux if you give it
enough memory.  There are many makers of these, but the eval boards
are a bit pricier than the low end.

Good luck!

>hi 
>i am new here.  i would like to learn embedded programming on a very
well
>established microcontoller.  I know that PICs are becoming more popular
>but can someone tell me of a controller that is popular in industry for
>several years (8 or 16 bit) and also has products available that i can
use
>to learn such as demo kits. motorola 68XX? Atmel? 8051?
>
>many thanks
>john
>
>
>

hi
thanks for alot of good advice.  I have looked further and decided
upon the avr micrcontroller to start off.

there is a lot of demand in the UK for ARM engineers.  Is it possible
to obtain a development board for this brand?
I have been on their website and again as a beginner it is very
confusing?
Oh yes i have very good c programming skills so this is not a problem 
for me.
thanks
john

On Tue, 20 Nov 2007 19:13:28 -0800 (PST), steve
<bungalow_steve@yahoo.com> wrote:

>On Nov 20, 6:01 am, "johnstokes30" <johnstoke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> hi
>> i am new here.  i would like to learn embedded programming on a very well
>> established microcontoller.  I know that PICs are becoming more popular
>> but can someone tell me of a controller that is popular in industry for
>> several years (8 or 16 bit) and also has products available that i can use
>> to learn such as demo kits. motorola 68XX? Atmel? 8051?
>>
>> many thanks
>> john
>
>
>I would suggest a 32 bit ARM, for $20 you can be up and running with a
>C complier and eval board in a few hours (Analog devices in my case)

Getting interrupts going, especially nested interrupts, is not easy on
an ARM for a newbie. I would also recommend AVR for a beginner.
Lots of resources, one learn how to use gcc, which provides one with
knowledge to get gcc going for ARM, Cortex and a host of other micros
which has gcc available.

Regards
  Anton Erasmus

On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:43:37 +1300, Jim Granville
<no.spam@designtools.maps.co.nz> wrote:

>Ulf Samuelsson wrote:
>
>> "johnstokes30" <johnstokes30@gmail.com> skrev i meddelandet 
>> news:iYednf73dqkqdd_anZ2dnUVZ_t2inZ2d@giganews.com...
>> 
>>>hi
>>>i am new here.  i would like to learn embedded programming on a very well
>>>established microcontoller.  I know that PICs are becoming more popular
>>>but can someone tell me of a controller that is popular in industry for
>>>several years (8 or 16 bit) and also has products available that i can use
>>>to learn such as demo kits. motorola 68XX? Atmel? 8051?
>>>
>>>many thanks
>>>john
>>>
>> 
>> 
>> With the AVR, you need (want) the following tools.
>> 
>> 1) gcc C compiler  - or IAR. Some like Imagecraft.
>> 2) AVR Studio
>> 3) STK500 development board
>> 4) JTAG-ICE Mk II.
>> 
>> If you want a real cheap environment, then you can try out the AVR Dragon
>> which is a low cost, low featur combination of STK500 + JTAGICE Mk II
>> but only works for chips with 32 kB flash or less.
>
>  Can you clarify "only works for chips with 32 kB flash or less" ?

The Debug functionality only works for devices of 32kB or less. And
then only some of them as well. It supports the ATmega32 for example,
but not the ATmega162. One can still program devices such as the
ATMega128 though.

>- so that means the JTAG-ICE Mk II therein, is not going to also work 
>with an AVR32, for example ? Then what - you buy another JTAG-ICE Mk II 
>?  How do you then tell them appart ?
>
>
>  'Low feature' means what ? - just that 32K ceiling, or do other things
>not work either ?
>
>  Seems a little strange having a ceiling on an ICE. ST don't mention any
>on their STM32 Ice ?

If you buy the cheap STM32 dev kit (One with games and circleos), then
there is a debug limit as well. Something like 32K in RAM mode only.
At least it is better than the 16K limit (RAM only) for their STR9
version. 16K is basically useless for ARM if you link with new-lib.

Regards
  Anton Erasmus

On 2007-11-21, Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com> wrote:

>> TI's brain-dead mar-com stuff also frequenty talks about having
>> a "single-cycle instruction set" or something equally bogus
>> (some of the instructions take up to 5 clock cycles).
>
> To a marketer, "single-cycle instruction set" could mean "the set of 
> instructions that execute in a single cycle".

The register-to-register instructions are single-cycle, so I
suppose they could claim that's what they meant, but when you
see it in context, it seems to be implying that all
instructions in the instruction set are single-cycle (which is
pretty much true for processors like the AVR).

> Expect to see "New and Improved: now includes advanced
> multiple-cycle instructions--FREE!"

:)

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I'm RELIGIOUS!! I
                                  at               love a man with a
                               visi.com            HAIRPIECE!! Equip me with
                                                   MISSILES!!

In article <47438ce9$1@clear.net.nz>,
Jim Granville  <no.spam@designtools.maps.co.nz> wrote:
>Ulf Samuelsson wrote:

>> If you want a real cheap environment, then you can try out the AVR Dragon
>> which is a low cost, low featur combination of STK500 + JTAGICE Mk II
>> but only works for chips with 32 kB flash or less.

>  'Low feature' means what ? - just that 32K ceiling, or do other things
>not work either ?

>  Seems a little strange having a ceiling on an ICE. ST don't mention any
>on their STM32 Ice ?

Well it is just a $45 board, and is not such a bad deal for a USB powered
programmer with debug wire.  I have not seen any third party tools with
debug wire.  But I agree that it's a stupid marketing imposed limit to
protect their $300 ICE.

I have the STK500 plus a $40 www.ecrostech.com "ICE cube" JTAG ICE clone-
but it debugs only the devices with JTAG (but no stupid 32K limit :-) To the
original poster: take a look at www.kanda.com stk200ice and other third
party options on www.avrfreaks.net (but you'll get overloaded with all the
options).  Also one note about the STK500: it will program AT89S51s (Atmel
8051 clone), so you can try another architecture if you want.

Compare the ATMEL situation with, for example, the www.mdfly.com $60 PIC
ICD2 clone: it programs and debugs all modern PIC microcontrollers, from
8-pin devices though and including the new PIC32.  It has ZIF sockets, so
you can use it as a production programmer.
-- 
/*  jhallen@world.std.com AB1GO */                        /* Joseph H. Allen */
int a[1817];main(z,p,q,r){for(p=80;q+p-80;p-=2*a[p])for(z=9;z--;)q=3&(r=time(0)
+r*57)/7,q=q?q-1?q-2?1-p%79?-1:0:p%79-77?1:0:p<1659?79:0:p>158?-79:0,q?!a[p+q*2
]?a[p+=a[p+=q]=q]=q:0:0;for(;q++-1817;)printf(q%79?"%c":"%c\n"," #"[!a[q-1]]);}