Category Archives: CPU’s

Traps&Pitfalls: Overlapping Interrupt Priorities

Posted on by
Reply

It happens to me that I run into a really, really nasty problem. I spend hours (if not weeks) to get it resolved. Strong coffee and the problem keeps me up at long nights. I think every embedded system engineer knows what I’m talking about. Yeah, most of the time it is my fault or an oversight. But once in a while I’m convinced that I have found a real bug. Then I report it back to the vendor to fix it. I hope my report will prevent another engineers to run into the same problem. Or that I learn something else as a by-product. Oh yes….

Continue reading →

Copy my Project

Posted on by
3

I’m using Subversion to keep track of changes in my eclipse MCU10 projects. That allows me to get back in time without the need to make copies of my project. But sometimes I do need to make a copy of my project: because I want to use a project as a base and then do something different with it. To make a copy of a project is simple, but requires some more steps if I’m using Target Tasks. Here is how I do this… Continue reading →

Dissection of MCU10 Projects

Posted on by
10

Creating an eclipse managed make project with MCU10 is easy: Starting the wizard with File > New > Bareboard Project and after a few clicks I have a project. I don’t need to worry about all the files in the project structure, until……..well, until I need to put the files into a VCS.

Continue reading →

USB or not: CDC with Processor Expert

Posted on by
77

I had a PREN student showing up into my office. He wanted to choose a microcontroller for that project. One requirement put on the table was “it needs USB”. Well, I asked why USB is required. I was not surprised by the answer: “to use USB instead of RS-232”. Wow. So what he really wanted was USB CDC (Communication Device Class). Yep. Most notebooks today have no serial COM port (see “Processor Expert Configurations“). But because “USB is serial” does not mean “USB CDC is simple”. Nope. USB is not simple. But it can be with Processor Expert.

Continue reading →

Men In Black are back! Flashing and FX’ing…

Posted on by
11

I have mentioned in MCU10.2 released a new feature in CodeWarrior: support for the USB Universal Multilink FX from P&E Microcomputer Systems. Two Multilink FX arrived last week at the University, and finally I had my hands around it. The first thing which came to my mind when I saw the picture of the device on the P&E website: the black boxes are back!

Can I hope for a “Special FX Edition” in that box with cool sunglasses and a flash stick to erase and reprogram FLASH memory of microcontrollers? That would definitely make the flash erasing and programming easy and fast, as in the movie. 🙂
Continue reading →

Oh my! An Interrupt…

Posted on by
30

Ahhrg! Again, my microcontroller stopped in an interrupt. And I have no clue why?

Using Processor Expert in MCU10 is a great thing as it takes care about the vector table. Usually the default settings for code generation are fine, but not in my case here. If you run into a spurious and unexpected interrupt, you stop in the Cpu_Interrupt() handler:
Continue reading →

No Source Available…

Posted on by
Reply

I just have run across a problem: I received a project for the S08QE128, and when I started a debug session with MCU10.2, the debugger was showing “no source available”. Ahhrg. Something must be wrong…

No Source Available

No Source Available?

Well, at least I can debug on assembly level. But this is not the point. I have the sources, but somehow the debugger does not find them?
Continue reading →

Make my Make with Eclipse and MCU10

Posted on by
16

I mentioned in Go Reference that MCU10 and eclipse come with a comfortable infrastructure: you add, remove, rename source files and set compiler options: managed make will take care and creates the make files for you. Make files are such a great thing because they allow you do to pretty much everything.

Classic CodeWarrior uses a different approach without make files. Exporting the project as make file did not really work, so make files were not something you could have used easily in classic. With the eclipse based MCU10 make files are the heart of the build system. In most cases using the managed make system is perfectly fine. But for a bare metal enthusiast it makes sense to use my own make file instead.
Continue reading →

Back to Classic: FreeRTOS for Freescale S12(X)

Posted on by
2

One thing which is missing with the CodeWarrior for MCU10.2 announcement: MCU10.2 does not support the S12(X) from Freescale.

With this I still have several projects not ported to eclipse. So they are still implemented using the ‘classic’ (non-eclipse based) version of CodeWarrior for S12(X). And I’m using FreeRTOS in the eclipse based IDE with Processor Expert for S08, ColdFire and Kinetis, but not yet for the S12(X). What now?
Continue reading →