Hi Everyone,
I’m really interested in the SAM9-L9260 board that SFE offers. However I don’t think I want to run embedded Linux. I need precise control over the chip’s 32-bit counter in order to perform accurate timing, and I suspect getting that may be tough while running an OS? Eventually I will want to rig up an ethernet interface though.
At any rate, I’m curious as to what code development will be like without running Linux on the SAM9-L9260. Fairly simple? Or are there some things to watch out for? I’d be programming and developing with a Windows machine. Any problems there?
My experience in MCU development has been strictly 8-bit AVR thus far.
Thanks everyone for your input!
-Mike
Its a full microprocessor, with virtual memory support, privileged mode (its on other ARMs of course), external bus interface, etc. Its quite possible to go bare-bones on it, but what you really want is an RTOS to help manage application complexity. FreeRTOS has some ports available for ARM9.
Do you actually need the full power of the 9260? External SDRAM? NAND?
It would be easier to get by with a lower power integrated microcontroller, such as a Cortex-M3 based one or the good old ARM7TDMI cores. There are copious open source examples for the AT91SAM7X which feature an RTOS and an uIP or lwIP stack.
Thanks for the reply! I don’t need much peripheral-wise, but running the counter as fast as possible (90Mhz at least) is very important. I’d also appreciate the extra processing power for the sake of quickly performing calculations based on the counter values. And all that data needs to move quickly over Ethernet.
Thanks!
-Mike