New to ARMs, many questions

Development Boards MicroMod
1

Hey all,

I’ve been using AVRs for the past several years but have decided to get into ARMs.

I followed Jim Lynchs excellent tutorial to get up and running with GNUARM (good lord I never would have figured all that out). I have also demo’d Crossworks. Since I will be using this for paying projects I think I’ll spring for crossoworks. The IDE works great. Are other users of Crossworks satisfied with its performance? How does it compare to other compilers/IDEs such as Kiel, IAR, etc? How does using the GNU tools affect code size/speed? I’ve heard that GNU code is larger/slower. Is this true?

Now some more specific questions:

Can crossworks be used to compile/debug ethernut applications? I think the AT91SAM7X running ethernut would be great.

I think I might implement a MMC card into my next project. I’ve studied the interface and it seems simple enough, but why reinvent the wheel. Is there some code available that will implement the MMC interface as well as basic file I/O functions?

How can I do non-volatile storage of variables? AVRs had EEPROM available. Is there something on ARMs (I’ll probably mostly be using LPC parts) to allow similair functionality?

What components are neccesary to get an ARM cpu to run in my circuits? The olimex schematics for the LPC2106 and 2148 have a lot of components tied to the CPU, and I’m not really sure whats neccesary. Off hand I would suppose 3.3 and 1.8v (for the 2106) regulators, Xtal with caps, JTAG connector with resistors and debug jumper, BSL jumper/resistor, and reset jumper/pullup.

Im my experience so far I am very happy with ARM/LPC parts and crossworks. I have got a few basic applications such as a digital filter running on the olimex dev boards. 20uS to calculate a 16th order filter aint bad. Hopefully someone out there will have the patience to read all this and answer some questions. Thanks.

2

If you are using the LPC2000 it would be a good idea to join the LPC2000 Yahoo group, you will find a lot more expertise there (4000 members), including support from Philips.

Leon

3

Hello DrProton,

yes you can compiler/debug ethernut applications,

BUT not the current version :frowning: I have not find time

to make a port for Ethernut3 and CrossWorks :oops:

I have done it before with CrossWorks and I like the compiler.

Take a look here:

http://www.usbdip.de/en/ethernut2294/index.html

It was a port for an Olimex board, here I have not

used the original Ethernut3.

This was done with an “old” version of Nut/OS, the current

version is 4.1.9-rc7.

An other project which was done with CrossWorks can be found

here: http://www.usbdip.de/en/ucosarm/index.html

If I compare CrossWorks against the other you mention,

I personal like CrossWorks, here you can set a breakpoint

while the CPU is running. Try this with the other one.

Get your own view, and try the eval version, which you get

from all the companies you mention above.

Best regards,

Michael

4

Hi again,

if you need some more information about MMC software,

take a look here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/efsl

It is the Embedded Filesystems Library,

I have used it for the AVR, and it works :smiley:

Regards,

Michael