a couple questions regarding AT91SAM7S64 board

Hi - I’ve got a couple questions regarding the Olimex AT91SAM7S64 development board. First of all - I noticed the schematic is done with Eagle - is it possible to get the actual Eagle files that were used with it? That would be very helpful for me.

Also - on the Olimex site (does/will sparkfun carry this board? I don’t see it on the sparkfun website) there are some example programs available for the board. I’m assuming that these are designed for the GNU ARM compiler? Is there any guide available for setting up this compiler? The only guides I’ve seen have been Philips specific.

Lastly - is there a power supply available for this board through sparkfun or olimex? I’d rather not deal with trying to find one with a compatible connector…

Oh, on a related note - are there any plans for an AT91SAM7X dev board? I’m working on a board for a SAM7X256 right now - but I thought it might be a good idea to get a pre-made board with a similar chip that I could test out my code on, but it’d be really ideal if I could find a SAM7X256 board.

With regard to using the GCC, there are two yahoo groups you might find useful, the AT91SAM7 group and the GNUARM one.

The only other SAM7 based board that has been mentioned to be in development is the SAM7A2 one with external memory.

I think the current prelimiary status of the “X” parts and the lack of availability might need to be overcome before a dev board is in the works, but who am I to say?

Dingo_aus:
With regard to using the GCC, there are two yahoo groups you might find useful, the AT91SAM7 group and the GNUARM one.

The only other SAM7 based board that has been mentioned to be in development is the SAM7A2 one with external memory.

I think the current prelimiary status of the “X” parts and the lack of availability might need to be overcome before a dev board is in the works, but who am I to say?

Well I have samples arriving within a week or so - so I'd expect that Olimex could probabaly get the same... Though I'm not sure when they're going to hit full production.

Wow… Due to the complete lack of response I think I’ll just make my own dev board. This doesn’t seem like the best way to do business, Sparkfun/Olimex. Whatever floats your boat I suppose.

Whoa! Steady on there…

Olimex are probably very busy, just coming off holidays and all. They have quite a few boards in the pipeline.

They aren’t a huge corporation with whole departments waiting to field questions from customers.

Have you tried a direct PM or email?

NleahciM,

to your first question: we can’t provide you with our Eagle board files

regarding SAM7X they are so new that our Atmel distributor even didn’t heard of them, we are waiting samples, but don’t hold your breath, Atmel usually anounce their deveices one year before they are in the regular supply chain.

We placed to our distributor 1000 pcs order for AT91SAM7S64 in September 2004, got confirmation in December, first chips were delivered in July we had the SAM7-P64 boards in stock in September. Now we are rolling the ball for SAM7S256 which are with status production, but our distributor can’t confirm delivery date before December this year or early next year.

By the way the concept to integrate MAC interface inside the chip don’t make any advantage in hardware price point of view as ethernet PHY chip cost about the same as MAC+PHY chip and SAM7X ethernet connectivity will be not single but two chip solution anyway like any other micro without MAC inside.

regarding the late response, I’m sorry we are small company, we have 22 peoples in the design and production of the development boards and 20 other busy in the blank PCB production.

We don’t have dedicated technical support peoples and we release around 4-8 new development boards every month. It’s huge load to our peoples just to make the hardware design, the production and test procedures and the demo codes, as well to assembly thousands of boards each month, so I confess we are not the Parallax type company who send every board with 100 pages manuals which explain how to plug your RS232 cables to the PCB connectors, nor we have dedicated peoples to watch the forums

Best regards

Tsvetan