Looking for a good and free way to program MSP430 under Win XP using the Olimex JTAG tiny (via USB), I decided to go for mspgcc plus mspgdb/mspgdb-proxy.
These three parts work well for my MSP430f2013 via spy by wire. Wow!
The main disadvantage now is that the debugger is command line based. So I decided to look for a GUI/IDE.
The web is full of tips and hints.
I tried GPS (the former GVD). I could not even do a succesful build with this tool. Has this program ever been tested to work with mspgcc and mspgdb? Configuration with XML is rather horrible imho.
Eclipse is a little better: I managed to have Eclipse build the program. However, debugging via msp430-gdb gives problems. GDB returns errors. I could not figure out how to avoid these.
DDD only is available for linux/unix/cygwin. Did not try this yet.
The trial version of NOICE works and does not need any other programs! Hmm, this would cost $249. Not exactly free.
IAR works great but the code size limit will kill me in the end.
So basically my question is: how can I succeed in installing a freeware toolchain for msp430 on Win XP, including a GUI frontend for debugging or an IDE?
The 4k code size limit on IAR is only for C code. Assembly has no limit. Have you tried the new Code Composer? It is Eclipse based and has a 16k limit. Both can be found on the TI website.
I tried to install Code Composer Studio. For some reason it did not find the JTAG target. However, I started uninstalling things, and when I finally gave Eclipse (not CCS) a second chance, I got it working. Hurray!
It’s not freeware, but you might want to look at NoIce (www.noicedebugger.com). We spent a long time using GDB - nothing wrong with it, but I didn’t find it as productive as a GUI for debugging. We use the Olimex USB JTAG interface, and MSPGCC, and it integrates really well. I would really recommend downloading it to try, and see if it works for you.
