"Simon Walsh" <p@q.rwrote in message
news:mp*******************@news.indigo.ie...
>
I'm an Electronics student in college and I'm currently working on a
project. I was given a circuit diagram for my project, from which I had to
design a printed circuit board to be sent off and manufactured. I got my
printed circuit board back and populated it with components.
On my circuit board, I have a chip holder for a Basic STAMP
microcontroller. To those unfamiliar with it, the Basic STAMP is a
microcontroller which has an onboard Basic interpretter. What you do is
hook the Basic STAMP up to a PC via a COM port and send programs to it to
be executed on the circuit board.
Anyway, when it came to programming the chip, I was frustrated with
using Basic; the reason I was frustrated is that I am already experienced
with C and C++, and so had no interest in learning another language from
scratch, and also because Basic is the cripple of programming languages.
I want to write a program in C to be executed on my circuit board. My
initial thoughts were that I had two choices:
1) Somehow overide the Basic interpreter on the chip and supply it with my
own machine code to be executed (for this I would need a C compiler that
will produce machine code to be run on the Basic stamp).
2) Find a chip which has the same pin layout as the Basic STAMP and use
that instead.
Choice 2 would be my preference but I haven't found any such chip so
far. Would anyone here know of any such chip? As for Choice 1, I haven't a
clue how I would go about doing that so could anyone please offer some
advice?
I enquired around my college as to how I should go about this, and one
lecturer told me that there's a Java STAMP chip which is pin-compatiable
with the Basic STAMP. I thought this was great as the common features of C
and Java are almost identical... until I realised that Java doesn't have
pointers, ugh!
So any ideas on how I can write a program in C to be executed on my
circuit board which is set up to handle a Basic STAMP chip?
And just as an aside, why would anyone stick an interpreter on a
microcontroller when they can just compile the program on a PC and send
the
machine code to the microcontroller. . . ?
--
Simon Walsh
Pick a micro with a free c compiler.
Pic from microchip.com pic18f,pic24f and pic30f
microchip provide free student versions of their compilers for 18f,24f and
30f.
The pic16f only has the free limited version c compiler from hitec.
Pics were used in the earlier basic stamp models - I think(may be wrong)
that the latest ones are using scenix pic compatable micros
(run a lot faster up to 75MHz but no hardware peripherals).
avr from atmel
www.atmel.com/avr
winavr or avrgcc(linux or mac) are ports of gcc for avr
http://winavr.sourceforge.net/
digikey have a special on avr stk500 + jtage ice2 for US$150
or stk500 + avr dragon for US$49
http://www.digikey.com/scripts/dksea...KIT&dkcid=1971
There is a basic compiler for avr's from mcselec.com bascom avr
lite version is a free demo
http://www.mcselec.com/index.php?opt...d=208&Itemid=1
Smiley electronics make a good beginners book/kit on c for avr's using the
avr butterfly board
<http://www.smileymicros.com/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page &PAGE_id=26&MMN_position=2:2>
get the free starter pdf
http://www.smileymicros.com/QuickStartGuide.pdf
Another good website for avrs is
www.avrfreaks.net
Both pics and avr's are fairly simple to learn and use.
16f has 35 assembler instructions, 18f approx 115 ,
avr's approx 115
Olimex make cheap pic and avr boards, sparkfun.com sells them
pic boards
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/cat....php?cPath=2_9
avr boards
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/cat...php?cPath=2_10
Also futurlec.com have some cheap boards but can take a while to ship your
order
and their boards are not that well documented for beginners.
http://www.futurlec.com/Boards.shtml
There is also the msp430 chips from TI
<http://focus.ti.com/mcu/docs/mcuprodoverview.tsp?sectionId=95&tabId=140&familyI d=342&DCMP=MCU_other&HQS=Other+IL+msp430>
They also have a gcc port available.
http://mspgcc.sourceforge.net/
sparkfun.com also sell some boards
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/cat...php?cPath=2_11
Alex