I really like the doodads that come on the EA education board, and the
price is great.  I am 
thinking about getting this instead of the Olimex/Keil/IAR LPC2148 boards unless

someone here can pursuade me why one of the other boards is better (I'm all
ears!).

I'm also contemplating spending the extra money to get the Embest IDE and
UNetICE JTag 
debugger combo to round out my development environment.  I'll hold out hope
that one 
day a free toolchain will be available on OS X that can talk to the UNetICE, but
until then, I 
can work with XP.

I can justify the cost of the Embest IDE+UnetICE (about $1400).  I would
have an 
unrestricted development platform with this (I think?).  I have looked at what
IAR and Keil 
offers, and I cannot afford their unrestricted IDE options, only the code-size
restricted 
compilers.

Given that my primary goal right now is to be experienced programming and
debugging 
device drivers for FreeRTOS and uCOS/II (running on ARM), what advice can you
guys give 
me as far as the pros/cons of purchasing the Embest product versus spending less
and 
going with the more restricted setups from IAR and Keil?

I want to buy software/hardware with room for me to grow into, but I'm
limited to about 
$1500 right now.

Thanks!
-Jeff
	

> I want to buy software/hardware with room for me
to grow into, but 
I'm limited to about 
> $1500 right now.
> 
> Thanks!
> -Jeff
>

I don't know anything about the merits of various boards but I am 
happy with my Olimex LPC2106 board from Sparkfun.  I also have the 
LPC2106 header board and I'm looking at the LPC2148 development 
board.

I really think you should spend time with James Lynch's tutorial 
before you commit to spending a ton of money on development tools.  
I'm certainly not a 'professional' developer but I find the
Eclipse 
IDE and the GNU toolchain more than adequate.  Now, others will feel 
the IDE is unnecessary and I'm ok with that.  If they want to work 
from the command line then the toolchain works that way as well.  I 
just like the way it keeps my projects organized.  It is easy to 
copy and paste modules between projects.  Furthermore, the setup is 
exactly the same on my Linux machine and my XP machine.  My next 
project is to put dual monitors on my Linux machine.  That will 
happen next week.

I would put the money into a JTAG debugger only and I'm not sure I 
would do that.  JTAG is great but ISP will get the code transferred 
with no complications or cost.  Debugging can certainly be done 
without JTAG.  I use printf quite a bit.  But, if you have the money 
to spend, this is the place to put it.  Get something that works.

The tutorial is here: http://www.olimex.com/dev/pdf/ARM%20Cross%
20Development%20with%20Eclipse%20version%203.pdf

There are other points of view...

Richard
	

rtstofer wrote:

>I would put the money into a JTAG debugger only and
I'm not sure I 
>would do that.  JTAG is great but ISP will get the code transferred 
>with no complications or cost.  Debugging can certainly be done 
>without JTAG.  I use printf quite a bit.  But, if you have the money 
>to spend, this is the place to put it.  Get something that works.
>
>The tutorial is here: http://www.olimex.com/dev/pdf/ARM%20Cross%
>20Development%20with%20Eclipse%20version%203.pdf
>
>  
>
I would agree with that.  Maybe there are some pretty frills with 
purchasing a packaged development system, along with someone to hold 
your hand for you when you run into difficulties, but aside from that, I 
would spend the money on a decent JTAG unit.  If you've allocated $1500 
for tools it sounds as if you are not doing this as a hobby but have 
some serious project in mind.  For $1500 you probably could purchase 
something like the ARM Multi-Ice or other ethernet based JTAG unit.  I'm 
not sure what a LauterBach unit would go for...

You may want to consider the EPI Majic-LT as it is in your price range: 
http://www.epitools.com/products/probes.php

Another interesing unit appears to be the * GUARDIAN-SE*  Plus GDB: 
http://www.etoolsmiths.com/GDB-JTAG-Debug-Tools.html

I'm sure that a little time on google and you can find more potential 
solutions.

Unfortunately, the Abatron BDI2000 costs more than that and their 
BDI1000 model doesn't support gdb.  Otherwise I would recommend the 
BDI2000 @ USD$2700.  I use gcc-4.0.2, bintools-2.16.1, and Insight-6.4 
for my development toolchain.  I'm well satisfied with the GNU tools + 
BDI2000 running under Linux.

However, if you are not that serious about the project, and are willing 
to put up with some occasional frustration with the wiggler, you should 
be able to follow Lynch's Eclipse Tutorial and get a cygwin development 
together for less than $30.

Regards,

TomW

>There are other points of view...
>
>Richard
>
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> 
>Yahoo! Groups Links
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>
	-- 
Tom Walsh - WN3L - Embedded Systems Consultant
http://openhardware.net, http://cyberiansoftware.com
"Windows? No thanks, I have work to do..."
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