Hi,
On Sat, 06 Mar 2010 10:57:06 -0000, Xiaofan Chen
wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 6:33 PM, Andy B
wrote:
>>
>> We're lucky that Paul caters for hobbyists like this. At the price of
>> a personal license and no limitations on code size or debug
>> capabilities it is a huge bargain. If Rowley or Crossworks ever get's
>> bought up by a manufacturer (or worse, another tools company) you can
>> bet things will change and it won't be for the benefit of the
>> no-decent-profit customers like us.
>> Actually this is a good idea. It is a trend that vendors provide
> free or low cost C compilers (think Microchip and some others).
> Maybe if one of the big Arm MCU vendors buy Rowley and provide
> the IDE for free (just for their own chips), it may be a good business
> case for them. ;-)
Atmel have SAM Studio; NXP have LPCXpresso; Lumunary favour no vendor in
particular; ST have Atollic; Oh, they're all Eclipse. What a no-brainer
and with no effort. Analog are nowhere. Eclipse gets you lots for free,
but then you're no different to anybody else. Code Red, Attolic, Code
Sourcery, Altium, and even ARM's latest Eclipse IDE, all pretty dull.
> Just a thought. Maybe this will not happen any time
soon. It seems
> that ARM MCU vendors (or 8051 MCU vendors) never do this.
ARM purchased Keil. OK, they're not a vendor as such, but hey, it does
happen. Maybe something surprising will happen one day?
--
Paul Curtis, Rowley Associates Ltd http://www.rowley.co.uk
CrossWorks V2 is out for LPC1700, LPC3100, LPC3200, SAM9, and more!
printing source code in Crossworks 2
Started by ●March 5, 2010
Reply by ●March 6, 20102010-03-06
Reply by ●March 6, 20102010-03-06
Hi Andy,
> I'm sure (I hope) that Paul was just letting off steam. I think it
> says a lot that he is even here in this group (in the middle of the
> night!) to respond at all. The guy must live and breathe Crossworks
> and customer contact. How would you all feel if someone criticised
> your work from your day job in an open internet forum that you read
> at home when you are off-duty (You were at least at home relaxing
> weren't you Paul) ? I think he's entitled to vent a bit.
CrossWorks is a long-running project to get the absolutely best IDE I
can. I do everything I can within the resource constraints I have, and
that means I answer questions on the helpdesk during the day, handle
license and sales enquiries, and fit my programming activities around
that. I work late into the night as there's nothing on TV, the kids are
off playing, and I am more than keen to get a lot of what is in my head
into the world.
> I recently tried all the other ARM "starter" tools from IAR, Keil,
> Code-Red, as well as simple GCC (CodeSourcery) + favourite editor +
> flashmagic (ie. Free) setup. I got them all working and used them for
> a bit (mind you, I've never tried printing from any of them). I also
> use plenty of supposedly "professional" tools for other platforms at
> work that cost a great deal more (though I've never printed from them
> either come to think of it) and I dabble with manufacturers own tools
> (some free, some expensive) for a few platforms too (Microchip, AVR,
> Renesas, Freescale etc). In many cases you are lucky to ever see
> anything more than a "ticket number" and speak to a support person
> with a "have you tried..." script-sheet.
You should try Adobe customer support--what an experience! After placing
an order and them not shipping everything on that order, they asked me to
check my next credit card statement to see if they had charged me for what
I ordered! Gee, going round and round Indian call centers, filling in
forms, the whole experience was draining.
> We're lucky that Paul caters for hobbyists like this. At the price of
> a personal license and no limitations on code size or debug
> capabilities it is a huge bargain. If Rowley or Crossworks ever get's
> bought up by a manufacturer (or worse, another tools company) you can
> bet things will change and it won't be for the benefit of the
> no-decent-profit customers like us.
I might as well restate why we offer personal licenses, just for the
record.
In my youth, when microcomputers were just coming into the UK, a very kind
business (and two men in particular) let me into a small company during
Saturdays and Saturday night. They trusted me with their equipment and
let my enthusiasm for programming run riot. At the time, I really did not
appreciate what I had. I had no money to purchase my own personal
computer (PET or otherwise), but just using these machines on Saturday was
hugely exciting. Neil Hewitt, if you're still out there, I really do owe
you a beer or ten! It cost them nothing but electricity and a kind heart.
Now, I'd like others to do what I did. So, I offer our software at a 90%
discount to those that wish to dabble with hardware on their own time and
do so purely for the benefit of having a good time. $150 is a fair price,
it is expensive enough that hobbyists need to make a decision on whether
it's worth it to them, whether they'd really use it, it's not so much an
impulse purchase. If I offered it at a lower price, I may get more sales,
but to people that don't really value what they have. I am not in the $20
PIC starter kit, free software market, that is already catered for.
Why should I not give it away freely to hobbyists then? Well, the answer
is that I do so, when I feel there is a need. You don't see it, but we've
donated both hardware and software to many, many people. It costs us
effectively nothing, but in return you have a grateful, I would say loyal,
"customer"! That makes it all worthwhile. As does a small thank you now
and again.
Hopefully you will see another product emerge from a collaboration of very
enthusiastic engineers this year. This is a project I've been working on
since 2004, on and off. It was demonstrated, in a raw form, to some
people in Nuremberg. We've had a change of hardware recently and silicon
availability is very tight which has put us back a little, but other than
that it should be a really nice back-to-my-roots product. Hopefully it
will be successful, but you just never know. And it's less than $150 for
a corking, um, offering. Even my 10yo daughter is excited about it!
--
Paul Curtis, Rowley Associates Ltd http://www.rowley.co.uk
CrossWorks V2 is out for LPC1700, LPC3100, LPC3200, SAM9, and more!
> I'm sure (I hope) that Paul was just letting off steam. I think it
> says a lot that he is even here in this group (in the middle of the
> night!) to respond at all. The guy must live and breathe Crossworks
> and customer contact. How would you all feel if someone criticised
> your work from your day job in an open internet forum that you read
> at home when you are off-duty (You were at least at home relaxing
> weren't you Paul) ? I think he's entitled to vent a bit.
CrossWorks is a long-running project to get the absolutely best IDE I
can. I do everything I can within the resource constraints I have, and
that means I answer questions on the helpdesk during the day, handle
license and sales enquiries, and fit my programming activities around
that. I work late into the night as there's nothing on TV, the kids are
off playing, and I am more than keen to get a lot of what is in my head
into the world.
> I recently tried all the other ARM "starter" tools from IAR, Keil,
> Code-Red, as well as simple GCC (CodeSourcery) + favourite editor +
> flashmagic (ie. Free) setup. I got them all working and used them for
> a bit (mind you, I've never tried printing from any of them). I also
> use plenty of supposedly "professional" tools for other platforms at
> work that cost a great deal more (though I've never printed from them
> either come to think of it) and I dabble with manufacturers own tools
> (some free, some expensive) for a few platforms too (Microchip, AVR,
> Renesas, Freescale etc). In many cases you are lucky to ever see
> anything more than a "ticket number" and speak to a support person
> with a "have you tried..." script-sheet.
You should try Adobe customer support--what an experience! After placing
an order and them not shipping everything on that order, they asked me to
check my next credit card statement to see if they had charged me for what
I ordered! Gee, going round and round Indian call centers, filling in
forms, the whole experience was draining.
> We're lucky that Paul caters for hobbyists like this. At the price of
> a personal license and no limitations on code size or debug
> capabilities it is a huge bargain. If Rowley or Crossworks ever get's
> bought up by a manufacturer (or worse, another tools company) you can
> bet things will change and it won't be for the benefit of the
> no-decent-profit customers like us.
I might as well restate why we offer personal licenses, just for the
record.
In my youth, when microcomputers were just coming into the UK, a very kind
business (and two men in particular) let me into a small company during
Saturdays and Saturday night. They trusted me with their equipment and
let my enthusiasm for programming run riot. At the time, I really did not
appreciate what I had. I had no money to purchase my own personal
computer (PET or otherwise), but just using these machines on Saturday was
hugely exciting. Neil Hewitt, if you're still out there, I really do owe
you a beer or ten! It cost them nothing but electricity and a kind heart.
Now, I'd like others to do what I did. So, I offer our software at a 90%
discount to those that wish to dabble with hardware on their own time and
do so purely for the benefit of having a good time. $150 is a fair price,
it is expensive enough that hobbyists need to make a decision on whether
it's worth it to them, whether they'd really use it, it's not so much an
impulse purchase. If I offered it at a lower price, I may get more sales,
but to people that don't really value what they have. I am not in the $20
PIC starter kit, free software market, that is already catered for.
Why should I not give it away freely to hobbyists then? Well, the answer
is that I do so, when I feel there is a need. You don't see it, but we've
donated both hardware and software to many, many people. It costs us
effectively nothing, but in return you have a grateful, I would say loyal,
"customer"! That makes it all worthwhile. As does a small thank you now
and again.
Hopefully you will see another product emerge from a collaboration of very
enthusiastic engineers this year. This is a project I've been working on
since 2004, on and off. It was demonstrated, in a raw form, to some
people in Nuremberg. We've had a change of hardware recently and silicon
availability is very tight which has put us back a little, but other than
that it should be a really nice back-to-my-roots product. Hopefully it
will be successful, but you just never know. And it's less than $150 for
a corking, um, offering. Even my 10yo daughter is excited about it!
--
Paul Curtis, Rowley Associates Ltd http://www.rowley.co.uk
CrossWorks V2 is out for LPC1700, LPC3100, LPC3200, SAM9, and more!
Reply by ●March 6, 20102010-03-06
Paul Curtis schrieb:
> ARM purchased Keil.
But not because of the IDE/Compiler. Only because of Mr.Keil (unproved rumors)
--
42Bastian
+
| http://www.sciopta.com
| Fastest direct message passing kernel.
| IEC61508 certified.
+
> ARM purchased Keil.
But not because of the IDE/Compiler. Only because of Mr.Keil (unproved rumors)
--
42Bastian
+
| http://www.sciopta.com
| Fastest direct message passing kernel.
| IEC61508 certified.
+
Reply by ●March 6, 20102010-03-06
On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 7:06 PM, Paul Curtis wrote:
> Atmel have SAM Studio;
Where is this SAM Studio?
> NXP have LPCXpresso;
OEMed from Code Red.
> Lumunary favour no vendor in particular;
Maybe TI Code Composer. I read that they now offer free unlimited
Code Composer which locks to certain evaluation boards (but only the
EKS-LM3Sxxxx version, my EKI-LM3S1968 does not qualify).
http://www.luminarymicro.com/products/whats_new.html
> ST have Atollic; Oh, they're all Eclipse. What a no-brainer
> and with no effort.
> Analog are nowhere.
ADI is working hard to get some Cortex M3 based precision
MCU out. But I do not think they will come out with an Eclipse
based IDE.
> Eclipse gets you lots for free,
> but then you're no different to anybody else. Code Red, Attolic, Code
> Sourcery, Altium, and even ARM's latest Eclipse IDE, all pretty dull.
I am not fond of Eclipse myself. But it seems to be a fast way
to jump start the IDE offering for ARM MCU vendors without their
own IDE. Microchip is choosing Netbean though for MPLAB X as per
some reports.
>
>> Just a thought. Maybe this will not happen any time soon. It seems
>> that ARM MCU vendors (or 8051 MCU vendors) never do this.
>
> ARM purchased Keil. OK, they're not a vendor as such, but hey, it does
> happen. Maybe something surprising will happen one day?
>
I am surprised that none of the ARM MCU vendors have done
this yet. Freescale has CodeWarrior, Microchip has their own and
purchased HiTech Software. And Renesas have their own IDE and
compilers.
--
Xiaofan http://mcuee.blogspot.com
> Atmel have SAM Studio;
Where is this SAM Studio?
> NXP have LPCXpresso;
OEMed from Code Red.
> Lumunary favour no vendor in particular;
Maybe TI Code Composer. I read that they now offer free unlimited
Code Composer which locks to certain evaluation boards (but only the
EKS-LM3Sxxxx version, my EKI-LM3S1968 does not qualify).
http://www.luminarymicro.com/products/whats_new.html
> ST have Atollic; Oh, they're all Eclipse. What a no-brainer
> and with no effort.
> Analog are nowhere.
ADI is working hard to get some Cortex M3 based precision
MCU out. But I do not think they will come out with an Eclipse
based IDE.
> Eclipse gets you lots for free,
> but then you're no different to anybody else. Code Red, Attolic, Code
> Sourcery, Altium, and even ARM's latest Eclipse IDE, all pretty dull.
I am not fond of Eclipse myself. But it seems to be a fast way
to jump start the IDE offering for ARM MCU vendors without their
own IDE. Microchip is choosing Netbean though for MPLAB X as per
some reports.
>
>> Just a thought. Maybe this will not happen any time soon. It seems
>> that ARM MCU vendors (or 8051 MCU vendors) never do this.
>
> ARM purchased Keil. OK, they're not a vendor as such, but hey, it does
> happen. Maybe something surprising will happen one day?
>
I am surprised that none of the ARM MCU vendors have done
this yet. Freescale has CodeWarrior, Microchip has their own and
purchased HiTech Software. And Renesas have their own IDE and
compilers.
--
Xiaofan http://mcuee.blogspot.com
Reply by ●March 6, 20102010-03-06
Hi,
> On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 7:06 PM, Paul Curtis wrote:
>> Atmel have SAM Studio;
> Where is this SAM Studio?
Perhaps it never got past the "slides" stage. They have AVR32 Studio, SAM
Studio was billed as the same but for AT91SAM devices.
>> Lumunary favour no vendor in particular;
> Maybe TI Code Composer. I read that they now offer free unlimited
> Code Composer which locks to certain evaluation boards (but only the
> EKS-LM3Sxxxx version, my EKI-LM3S1968 does not qualify).
> http://www.luminarymicro.com/products/whats_new.html
Ah, yeah, TI's CCS. Again, Eclipse.
>> Analog are nowhere.
> ADI is working hard to get some Cortex M3 based precision
> MCU out.
I absolutely know what they're working on; however, they are nowhere with
an IDE.
> But I do not think they will come out with an Eclipse
> based IDE.
No, neither do I. They purchased EPC to get their compiler technology.
>> Eclipse gets you lots for free,
>> but then you're no different to anybody else. Code Red, Attolic, Code
>> Sourcery, Altium, and even ARM's latest Eclipse IDE, all pretty dull.
>
> I am not fond of Eclipse myself. But it seems to be a fast way
> to jump start the IDE offering for ARM MCU vendors without their
> own IDE. Microchip is choosing Netbean though for MPLAB X as per
> some reports.
None of these offerings gets you the same IDE to work across ARM or
non-ARM devices. Sure, it's all Eclipse, but hey, we do all those devices
and more.
>>> Just a thought. Maybe this will not happen any time soon. It seems
>>> that ARM MCU vendors (or 8051 MCU vendors) never do this.
>>
>> ARM purchased Keil. OK, they're not a vendor as such, but hey, it does
>> happen. Maybe something surprising will happen one day?
>
> I am surprised that none of the ARM MCU vendors have done
> this yet. Freescale has CodeWarrior, Microchip has their own and
> purchased HiTech Software. And Renesas have their own IDE and
> compilers.
Yeah, but ARM is different, isn't it? It's not an ARM silicon vendor that
would be interested in buying us out, that's for sure, because they can
get all that good stuff for free anyway.
Microchip's purchase of HI-TECH was cutthroat. Wow, what a way to dump
non-core HI-TECH compilers and leave customers with slit throats. But I
guess customers should have seen the writing on the wall for their non-PIC
compilers anyway, most went to "legacy" status. I'm not sure Clyde had
much of a say in the knifework, though.
--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
> On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 7:06 PM, Paul Curtis wrote:
>> Atmel have SAM Studio;
> Where is this SAM Studio?
Perhaps it never got past the "slides" stage. They have AVR32 Studio, SAM
Studio was billed as the same but for AT91SAM devices.
>> Lumunary favour no vendor in particular;
> Maybe TI Code Composer. I read that they now offer free unlimited
> Code Composer which locks to certain evaluation boards (but only the
> EKS-LM3Sxxxx version, my EKI-LM3S1968 does not qualify).
> http://www.luminarymicro.com/products/whats_new.html
Ah, yeah, TI's CCS. Again, Eclipse.
>> Analog are nowhere.
> ADI is working hard to get some Cortex M3 based precision
> MCU out.
I absolutely know what they're working on; however, they are nowhere with
an IDE.
> But I do not think they will come out with an Eclipse
> based IDE.
No, neither do I. They purchased EPC to get their compiler technology.
>> Eclipse gets you lots for free,
>> but then you're no different to anybody else. Code Red, Attolic, Code
>> Sourcery, Altium, and even ARM's latest Eclipse IDE, all pretty dull.
>
> I am not fond of Eclipse myself. But it seems to be a fast way
> to jump start the IDE offering for ARM MCU vendors without their
> own IDE. Microchip is choosing Netbean though for MPLAB X as per
> some reports.
None of these offerings gets you the same IDE to work across ARM or
non-ARM devices. Sure, it's all Eclipse, but hey, we do all those devices
and more.
>>> Just a thought. Maybe this will not happen any time soon. It seems
>>> that ARM MCU vendors (or 8051 MCU vendors) never do this.
>>
>> ARM purchased Keil. OK, they're not a vendor as such, but hey, it does
>> happen. Maybe something surprising will happen one day?
>
> I am surprised that none of the ARM MCU vendors have done
> this yet. Freescale has CodeWarrior, Microchip has their own and
> purchased HiTech Software. And Renesas have their own IDE and
> compilers.
Yeah, but ARM is different, isn't it? It's not an ARM silicon vendor that
would be interested in buying us out, that's for sure, because they can
get all that good stuff for free anyway.
Microchip's purchase of HI-TECH was cutthroat. Wow, what a way to dump
non-core HI-TECH compilers and leave customers with slit throats. But I
guess customers should have seen the writing on the wall for their non-PIC
compilers anyway, most went to "legacy" status. I'm not sure Clyde had
much of a say in the knifework, though.
--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
Reply by ●March 6, 20102010-03-06
Hi,
On Sat, 06 Mar 2010 11:23:12 -0000, 42Bastian
wrote:
> Paul Curtis schrieb:
>
>> ARM purchased Keil.
>
> But not because of the IDE/Compiler. Only because of Mr.Keil (unproved
> rumors)
It's a way to not scare customers using Keil's 51 products when it comes
to ARM, I guess. I have no inside on the purchase, so I have no personal
knowledge of the details.
-- Paul.
On Sat, 06 Mar 2010 11:23:12 -0000, 42Bastian
wrote:
> Paul Curtis schrieb:
>
>> ARM purchased Keil.
>
> But not because of the IDE/Compiler. Only because of Mr.Keil (unproved
> rumors)
It's a way to not scare customers using Keil's 51 products when it comes
to ARM, I guess. I have no inside on the purchase, so I have no personal
knowledge of the details.
-- Paul.
Reply by ●March 6, 20102010-03-06
At 11:39 06/03/2010, Xiaofan Chen wrote:
> Freescale has CodeWarrior,
In the old days CodeWarrior was great. Hasn't been the same since
they lost the Apple Mac market.
They have switched to Eclipse now for future development. Big shame IMHO.
You can see why... it's a lot of work to maintain a decent toolchain,
debugger, IDE, other tools, libraries etc.
And then you have to target all those different chips and platforms.
I guess if you use Eclipse you can focus on keeping up with new chips
and platforms with a lot less effort and lot less support load.
I can see why they do it but as a user/developer I think it is a very
disappointing trend.
> Freescale has CodeWarrior,
In the old days CodeWarrior was great. Hasn't been the same since
they lost the Apple Mac market.
They have switched to Eclipse now for future development. Big shame IMHO.
You can see why... it's a lot of work to maintain a decent toolchain,
debugger, IDE, other tools, libraries etc.
And then you have to target all those different chips and platforms.
I guess if you use Eclipse you can focus on keeping up with new chips
and platforms with a lot less effort and lot less support load.
I can see why they do it but as a user/developer I think it is a very
disappointing trend.
Reply by ●March 6, 20102010-03-06
> ARM purchased Keil. OK, they're not a vendor as
such, but hey, it does
> happen. Maybe something surprising will happen one day?
"In August 1999, Motorola's semiconductor sector (SPS) acquired Metrowerks for roughly $100 million in cash.
...
In October 2005, Freescale retired the Metrowerks name but continues to develop CodeWarrior and other developer technologies as part of Freescale's Developer Technology Organization."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrowerks
The relationship between semiconductor manufacturers and tools has changed dramatically in the last 15 years (ATMEL with AVR was possibly one of the first to set the trend). The present trend is very much Eclipse based - personally, apart from the fact that it is useful for loading code to AVR32s, I find it overcomplicated and rather slow; on top of that I never managed to get the debugger working on any of my laptops - only on (retired) desktops.
It is one of those hard-core open source projects (based on a code donation from IBM) where it is difficult getting help if you are not already hard-core yourself. Asking simple bone-head questions like "how do I configure something" tends to get a response like "go away and study Pearl, Python and Linux Kernel programming..." (may not be suitable in this case but this is an example of a response that was really received from such a community...).
For a (semi-con.)company wishing to jump on the bandwagon it is however a logical step since it can be customised to give a corporate identity but benefit from a lot of available features and development. At the end of the day there are probably a lot who love it and other who hate it, as true for everything in life...
Regards
Mark
http://www.uTasker.com
> happen. Maybe something surprising will happen one day?
"In August 1999, Motorola's semiconductor sector (SPS) acquired Metrowerks for roughly $100 million in cash.
...
In October 2005, Freescale retired the Metrowerks name but continues to develop CodeWarrior and other developer technologies as part of Freescale's Developer Technology Organization."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrowerks
The relationship between semiconductor manufacturers and tools has changed dramatically in the last 15 years (ATMEL with AVR was possibly one of the first to set the trend). The present trend is very much Eclipse based - personally, apart from the fact that it is useful for loading code to AVR32s, I find it overcomplicated and rather slow; on top of that I never managed to get the debugger working on any of my laptops - only on (retired) desktops.
It is one of those hard-core open source projects (based on a code donation from IBM) where it is difficult getting help if you are not already hard-core yourself. Asking simple bone-head questions like "how do I configure something" tends to get a response like "go away and study Pearl, Python and Linux Kernel programming..." (may not be suitable in this case but this is an example of a response that was really received from such a community...).
For a (semi-con.)company wishing to jump on the bandwagon it is however a logical step since it can be customised to give a corporate identity but benefit from a lot of available features and development. At the end of the day there are probably a lot who love it and other who hate it, as true for everything in life...
Regards
Mark
http://www.uTasker.com
Reply by ●March 6, 20102010-03-06
On 06/03/2010 10:33, Andy B wrote:
>
>> At 08:14 06/03/2010, Thomas M. Alldread wrote:
>> Greetings:
>>
>> I have used other mainstream IDEs and in general personally prefer
>> Rowley's Crossworks. I think the features offered by the Crossworks IDE
>> ranks with the other major IDEs
>
> Nicely put Thomas. You almost saved me saying it. But I still don't
> like seeing a (so-far in my experience) excellent company
> misrepresented either so I would like to add my thoughts to help
> balance out any overall impression here.
>
> I'm sure (I hope) that Paul was just letting off steam. I think it
> says a lot that he is even here in this group (in the middle of the
> night!) to respond at all. The guy must live and breathe Crossworks
> and customer contact. How would you all feel if someone criticised
> your work from your day job in an open internet forum that you read
> at home when you are off-duty (You were at least at home relaxing
> weren't you Paul) ? I think he's entitled to vent a bit.
>
> I recently tried all the other ARM "starter" tools from IAR, Keil,
> Code-Red, as well as simple GCC (CodeSourcery) + favourite editor +
> flashmagic (ie. Free) setup. I got them all working and used them for
> a bit (mind you, I've never tried printing from any of them). I also
> use plenty of supposedly "professional" tools for other platforms at
> work that cost a great deal more (though I've never printed from them
> either come to think of it) and I dabble with manufacturers own tools
> (some free, some expensive) for a few platforms too (Microchip, AVR,
> Renesas, Freescale etc). In many cases you are lucky to ever see
> anything more than a "ticket number" and speak to a support person
> with a "have you tried..." script-sheet.
>
> IMHO Crossworks "just works" better than all the others (Crossconnect
> even works on Win7 x64 with no trouble at all!). And when you get
> into using the features many of those work better too. The IDE is
> much nicer and pretty responsive (way slicker than all the Eclipse
> based stuff I have seen). And the response from Rowley even as a
> personal license customer (ie. no guaranteed support) is better than
> many companies charging 20x as much for their 'similar' products. You
> can just tell that Rowley are more committed to their products and
> more responsive to their customers.
>
> All development toolkits (that I have used) have bugs. Few, if any,
> of those companies are as well supported or responsive to their users
> and new hardware platforms as Rowley.
>
> We're lucky that Paul caters for hobbyists like this. At the price of
> a personal license and no limitations on code size or debug
> capabilities it is a huge bargain. If Rowley or Crossworks ever get's
> bought up by a manufacturer (or worse, another tools company) you can
> bet things will change and it won't be for the benefit of the
> no-decent-profit customers like us.
>
> I've never met anyone from Rowley but if I ever do there is a beer
> and big thankyou from me.
I much prefer the CrossStudio IDE to others I use, and second the
comments about Rowley's excellent support.
Also, they are very liberal with complimentary licenses and hardware. I
worked on a medical instrument project (developing a machine to measure
blood cell deformation) at a university in France and Rowley donated a
CrossWorks ARM license.
Leon
--
Leon Heller
G1HSM
>
>> At 08:14 06/03/2010, Thomas M. Alldread wrote:
>> Greetings:
>>
>> I have used other mainstream IDEs and in general personally prefer
>> Rowley's Crossworks. I think the features offered by the Crossworks IDE
>> ranks with the other major IDEs
>
> Nicely put Thomas. You almost saved me saying it. But I still don't
> like seeing a (so-far in my experience) excellent company
> misrepresented either so I would like to add my thoughts to help
> balance out any overall impression here.
>
> I'm sure (I hope) that Paul was just letting off steam. I think it
> says a lot that he is even here in this group (in the middle of the
> night!) to respond at all. The guy must live and breathe Crossworks
> and customer contact. How would you all feel if someone criticised
> your work from your day job in an open internet forum that you read
> at home when you are off-duty (You were at least at home relaxing
> weren't you Paul) ? I think he's entitled to vent a bit.
>
> I recently tried all the other ARM "starter" tools from IAR, Keil,
> Code-Red, as well as simple GCC (CodeSourcery) + favourite editor +
> flashmagic (ie. Free) setup. I got them all working and used them for
> a bit (mind you, I've never tried printing from any of them). I also
> use plenty of supposedly "professional" tools for other platforms at
> work that cost a great deal more (though I've never printed from them
> either come to think of it) and I dabble with manufacturers own tools
> (some free, some expensive) for a few platforms too (Microchip, AVR,
> Renesas, Freescale etc). In many cases you are lucky to ever see
> anything more than a "ticket number" and speak to a support person
> with a "have you tried..." script-sheet.
>
> IMHO Crossworks "just works" better than all the others (Crossconnect
> even works on Win7 x64 with no trouble at all!). And when you get
> into using the features many of those work better too. The IDE is
> much nicer and pretty responsive (way slicker than all the Eclipse
> based stuff I have seen). And the response from Rowley even as a
> personal license customer (ie. no guaranteed support) is better than
> many companies charging 20x as much for their 'similar' products. You
> can just tell that Rowley are more committed to their products and
> more responsive to their customers.
>
> All development toolkits (that I have used) have bugs. Few, if any,
> of those companies are as well supported or responsive to their users
> and new hardware platforms as Rowley.
>
> We're lucky that Paul caters for hobbyists like this. At the price of
> a personal license and no limitations on code size or debug
> capabilities it is a huge bargain. If Rowley or Crossworks ever get's
> bought up by a manufacturer (or worse, another tools company) you can
> bet things will change and it won't be for the benefit of the
> no-decent-profit customers like us.
>
> I've never met anyone from Rowley but if I ever do there is a beer
> and big thankyou from me.
I much prefer the CrossStudio IDE to others I use, and second the
comments about Rowley's excellent support.
Also, they are very liberal with complimentary licenses and hardware. I
worked on a medical instrument project (developing a machine to measure
blood cell deformation) at a university in France and Rowley donated a
CrossWorks ARM license.
Leon
--
Leon Heller
G1HSM
Reply by ●March 6, 20102010-03-06
Rob,
What is it about the 9.1 Ubuntu you don't like?
r...@usbmicro.com wrote:
style="display: none;">
>> I'll still be your "voice of praise". You have a helluva
product and
>> phenomenal support. I'm always happy to recommend the
development
>> system and your hardware whenever I can.
>>
>> I don't think I have ever - even once - printed from within
>> Crossworks. And I would think that it is probably the Linux
setup that
>> does those things.
>>
>> -Rob
>>
> As I said earlier, it DOES work on Ubuntu 9.10 (dual core x86
laptop). Nothing wrong at all!
> But Linux has all kinds of warts. Sometimes even the easiest
things don't work out.
> In any event, I have V2 working on Ubuntu 9.10 and Win7/x64. It
works very well.
I'm pretty disappointed that there isn't a commodore 64 port. :-P
I don't envy Paul. I really like how far linux has come, but there are
still issues. In fact my install of Ubuntu 9.10 is a step back from
9.04, sadly. I have example linux code for my USB hardware interface
product, but it is supplied 'as is'.
-Rob
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