questions about motorola microcontrollers and MCUs in general

Vladimir Vassilevsky wrote:
> 
> 1. In our days, there is no real difference which microcontroller to
> use. The choice is determined by preference;  all vendors have similar
> offerings in the similar classes for the similar price.

Please do not top-post.  Your answer belongs after, or intermixed
with, the material to which you reply, after snipping anything
irrelevant.  See the following links:

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David Kelly wrote:
>That and free Metrowerks CodeWarrior is all one needs to get started 
>coding, debugging, and programing devices. Can throw another $500 at P&E 
>pretty easily but the most bang for the buck is in that first $99.
If you want to go even cheaper you can pick up a freescale development
kit (DEMO9S12XDT512) which has BDM on board.

>Microchip and Freescale parts are pretty hard to deal with unless one is 
>using the manufacturer's IDE. AVR and ARM are much easier to use with 
>independent tools.
GCC is available for HC12:
http://m68hc11.serveftp.org/blog/

A Perl based XGate asembler is available here:
http://home.arcor.de/hotwolf/hsw12asm.html

Much more HC12 information here:
http://elmicro.com/hc12web/

Andy Sinclair wrote:
> David Kelly wrote:
> 
>> Microchip and Freescale parts are pretty hard to deal with unless one is 
>> using the manufacturer's IDE. AVR and ARM are much easier to use with 
>> independent tools.
> GCC is available for HC12:
> http://m68hc11.serveftp.org/blog/
> 
> A Perl based XGate asembler is available here:
> http://home.arcor.de/hotwolf/hsw12asm.html
> 
> Much more HC12 information here:
> http://elmicro.com/hc12web/

Yes, what I said the first time. Is not impossible, but pretty darn hard 
if one does not use the manufacturer's IDE.

On Feb 22, 9:37 am, David Kelly <n...@Yahoo.com> wrote:

> Suggest you concentrate less on "learning HC12" and more on learning how
> to solve problems with a microcontroller. Then in the future you will be
> prepared for the toughest and riskiest part of the design process:
> defining your requirements and shopping for solutions. If every problem
> looks like an HC12 solution, or PIC, or AVR, then you are not really
> giving others a fair shake.

Since when is it an engineer's or hobbyists job to give manufacturer's
a fair shake?
If you come to my office on a day when I'm looking for a break and not
trying to get something out the door, and give me free dev tools, I'll
take a look at your uP.  But otherwise, my job is to get my job done,
as efficiently and effectively as reasonably possible.

We use the MC9S12NE64, and HCS12 with ethernet.  We use it
extensively.  Originally we got it for the ethernet, but we now use it
a lot of places where that isn't used.  Why?  Because we had it
around, had code that ran on it.  And now, after over two years of
working with it, I can only just claim to be starting to be really
"good" with it.  Sure- I got things working before, but I'm only just
getting the full picture of what the options and concerns are.... as
still building my bag of tricks for doing oddball things.

It isn't the only chip I work with.  A lot of my code can compile on
mulitple embedded processors and even for a windows pc.  But when I
need something reasonably capable, compact, easy for the production
floor to get right, etc... a lot of problems do look like 9s12 shaped
solutions.  (Though there was that issue recently with the difference
between a stock of 80-pin 9s1-shaped solutions and 112-pin shaped 9s12-
problems... er, pcb boards)

Whoever said BGA's was way off base... these parts are mostly LQFP's -
not too bad for hand soldering with care, though you will generally
want a pc board.

David Kelly wrote:

[...]

>Microchip and Freescale parts are pretty hard to deal with unless one is 
>using the manufacturer's IDE.

"manufacturer's IDEs" are (usually) evil. Use generic tools: a good
text editor, make, Lint, subversion, doxygen.

For the HC(S)12, the Cosmic compiler works great and isn't harder to
set up than CodeWorrier (bloatware IMO). You have to understand the
options, anyway, don't you?

On the other hand, CW is free up to 32K code IIRC. Cosmic has to earn
money.

I was not happy with GCCs code quality several years ago. Cosmic and
CW produced much better code - hard to beat by hand crafted assembler.
One has to check this carefully before starting.

Oliver
-- 
Oliver Betz, Muenchen (oliverbetz.de)

Vladimir Vassilevsky wrote:

[...]

>4. To start working with HCS12, you need a BDM programmer from PE micro. 

Definitely no.

Look at http://www.noicedebugger.com/ for cheap solutions. NoICE and
ComPOD12 NG are a good start, cost is 300EUR.

I use iSYSTEM iC3000 (expensive) but I'm not sure whether I would buy
it again.

>This is somewhat $500 of the initial investment.

TBDML is close to "free".

Oliver
-- 
Oliver Betz, Muenchen (oliverbetz.de)

On Feb 24, 5:23 am, Oliver Betz <O...@despammed.com> wrote:

> >4. To start working with HCS12, you need a BDM programmer from PE micro.
>
> Definitely no.
>
> Look athttp://www.noicedebugger.com/for cheap solutions. NoICE and
> ComPOD12 NG are a good start, cost is 300EUR.

Last time I checked exchange rates, 300EUR was a lot more than the
99US price of a P&E USB BDM pod recommended by freescale.

You don't absolutely need a pod, but you will save yourself a lot of
trouble getting one.  I've recently discovered that my custom serial
loader/updgrader is actually faster (we are talking less than half a
minute either way though) but I have to get it in there somehow to
begin with, and if I made a mistake and need to repgram the now
"bricked" chip, the pod is indespensible.

Also I'm almost always using both serial ports, which would make a
serial debugger difficult.

cs_posting@hotmail.com wrote:

>> >4. To start working with HCS12, you need a BDM programmer from PE micro.
>>
>> Definitely no.
>>
>> Look athttp://www.noicedebugger.com/for cheap solutions. NoICE and
>> ComPOD12 NG are a good start, cost is 300EUR.
>
>Last time I checked exchange rates, 300EUR was a lot more than the
>99US price of a P&E USB BDM pod recommended by freescale.

For the EUR300 you get also the great NoICE source level debugger, so
the difference is less.

Where does Freescale "recommend" the P&E interface?

>You don't absolutely need a pod, but you will save yourself a lot of

you _need_ it if you buy a bare S12 chip because they come without any
loader or debugger. You don't need it if you buy a development board
and don't erase the bootloader.

You definitely _want_ it because BDM (offering non-intrusive memory
access) is one of the nicest things in the HCS12.

Oliver
-- 
Oliver Betz, Muenchen (oliverbetz.de)

On Feb 24, 12:27 pm, Oliver Betz <O...@despammed.com> wrote:
> cs_post...@hotmail.com wrote:
> >> >4. To start working with HCS12, you need a BDM programmer from PE micro.
>
> >> Definitely no.
>
> >> Look athttp://www.noicedebugger.com/forcheap solutions. NoICE and
> >> ComPOD12 NG are a good start, cost is 300EUR.
>
> >Last time I checked exchange rates, 300EUR was a lot more than the
> >99US price of a P&E USB BDM pod recommended by freescale.
>
> For the EUR300 you get also the great NoICE source level debugger, so
> the difference is less.

A "cheap solution" would be the $99 P&E pod and the 32k code size
limit special edition of codewarrior (free) - including a source level
debugger.

The cheapskate soution would be trying to get by with no BDM pod at
all.  On that at least we seem in agreement.

> You definitely _want_ it because BDM (offering non-intrusive memory
> access) is one of the nicest things in the HCS12.

As for the question of recommending it... the coldfire boards from
freescale have a P&E pod built into them...  I think we actually
purchased our HCS12 ones through freescale, though I'll have to check
the records to see if that is true.  It's pretty obviously - official
or not quite - the recommended step up from serial port only.
Obviously there are more full featured solutions avaiable too.

cs_posting@hotmail.com wrote:
>A "cheap solution" would be the $99 P&E pod and the 32k code size
>limit special edition of codewarrior (free) - including a source level
>debugger.
>
>As for the question of recommending it... the coldfire boards from
>freescale have a P&E pod built into them...  I think we actually
>purchased our HCS12 ones through freescale, though I'll have to check
>the records to see if that is true.  It's pretty obviously - official
>or not quite - the recommended step up from serial port only.
>Obviously there are more full featured solutions avaiable too.

I have a Freescale HCS12X demo board on my desk which has a P&E BDM
built in and is only $85 from digikey (DEMO9S12XDT512).

Andy