Post by thread:[EE]: Freescale ColdFire CPUs?

Hi, Seeing as there's been a lot of talk of Freescale's offerings on the PIClist recently, I decided to take a look at their website... and noticed the ColdFire CPUs. Has anyone had a play with the Coldfires? I'm looking at the MCF5307 and the MCF5206e. Anyone got any comments? The SDRAM interface looks interesting; I'm sure I could scavenge a few 32MB SDRAM modules from somewhere, and DIMM sockets aren't exactly hard to get (find old motherboard, soak joints in flux, heat, remove, repeat). Do the Coldfires have any weird clock or timing requirements? Also, has anyone tried Freescale's online samples ordering system? How long did it take from ordering to delivery? These CPUs look pretty cool.. especially seeing as they're capable of running Linux (<http://www.uclinux.org/>). Thanks, -- Phil. | Acorn Risc PC600 Mk3, SA202, 64MB, 6GB, spam_OUTphilpemTakeThisOuTphilpem.me.uk | ViewFinder, 10BaseT Ethernet, 2-slice, http://www.philpem.me.uk/ | 48xCD, ARCINv6c IDE, SCSI ... (beep) Help, I've fallen and can't reach the beer.

I had a class in which we designed a board with the 5206e. It had a 4MB DRAM module and 1MB of Flash and ran uCLinux ( http://www.uclinux.org ). We used a port of gcc with gdb to program it. Although we had a good teacher to help us out, there were no major snags or gotchas. The Coldfires are pretty nice and relatively easy-to-use microcontrollers. I recommend playing around with them. If you want to have a look at the class website, there's plenty of useful links. http://www.lynch.ece.ufl.edu/EEL5745/5745main.html Alex Parkinson

In message <.....41CC2A36.2090504KILLspam@spam@circuitwerkes.com> Alex Parkinson <alexKILLspamcircuitwerkes.com> wrote: > I had a class in which we designed a board with the 5206e. It had a 4MB DRAM module and > 1MB of Flash and ran uCLinux ( http://www.uclinux.org ). We used a port of gcc with gdb to > program it. Although we had a good teacher to help us out, there were no major snags or > gotchas. The Coldfires are pretty nice and relatively easy-to-use microcontrollers. I > recommend playing around with them. If you want to have a look at the class website, > there's plenty of useful links. http://www.lynch.ece.ufl.edu/EEL5745/5745main.html Thanks for that - I'll have a good look through those links when I get a few minutes spare. What I would like to know is if it's possible to use (abuse?) the CPU's JTAG port to program the Flash ROM while it's in circuit. If not, I'm going to need a few adapters for my EPROM programmer :-/ My intention was to hook a Coldfire up to a Xilinx gate array and a touchscreen LCD to make a simple eBook reader. I'd probably use a 32MB SDRAM DIMM and clock the CPU at about 33MHz, then use one of the Samsung LCDs that EarthLCD are selling as a display. That is, unless anyone knows of another source of low-cost 320x240 res (or higher) 3" or so backlit touchscreen PDA LCDs. Later. -- Phil. | Acorn Risc PC600 Mk3, SA202, 64MB, 6GB, .....philpemKILLspam.....philpem.me.uk | ViewFinder, 10BaseT Ethernet, 2-slice, http://www.philpem.me.uk/ | 48xCD, ARCINv6c IDE, SCSI ... So many lawyers, so few bullets.

Philip Pemberton wrote: > What I would like to know is if it's possible to use (abuse?) > the CPU's JTAG port to program the Flash ROM while it's in circuit. If not, > I'm going to need a few adapters for my EPROM programmer :-/ While I'm not sure about using jtag, we designed a background debug module (BDM) that worked with gdb flawlessly. We used this to program the internal Flash ROM. It was always my intentions to write a gdb script to program the external Flash, as well, but I never got around to it. It's definitely possible, however. Alex

In message <EraseME41CC3AD0.6090404spam_OUTTakeThisOuTcircuitwerkes.com> Alex Parkinson <alexspam_OUTcircuitwerkes.com> wrote: > While I'm not sure about using jtag, we designed a background debug module (BDM) that > worked with gdb flawlessly. We used this to program the internal Flash ROM. It was > always my intentions to write a gdb script to program the external Flash, as well, but I > never got around to it. It's definitely possible, however. I thought the BDM on the Coldfire only allowed you to do stuff like single-stepping, RAM sniffing and such. If it's possible to use the BDM to bootstrap the CPU, then all I really need is a BDM adapter and a simple bootstrap. Guess I need to read through the 500-page Coldfire datasheet :-/ Later. -- Phil. | Acorn Risc PC600 Mk3, SA202, 64MB, 6GB, @spam@philpemKILLspamphilpem.me.uk | ViewFinder, 10BaseT Ethernet, 2-slice, http://www.philpem.me.uk/ | 48xCD, ARCINv6c IDE, SCSI McBorgs - Over one billion assimilated!