Microcontrollers

[Siekmanski]

Yes, I use AVR Studio Ver 4.18.716

What kind of projects have you done?

[felipe]

Not one yet, i'm beginning to learn. But this time i won't quit. I will try to master a little bit this programming art.  :icon_mrgreen:

[felipe]

Btw i think the least number, i.e. x.xx.716 is the build number of that version of the avr studio. I can't remember now what version i installed (i mean what build number). It took me a while to find this version because i was looking the version 4 (because i'm learning with a book that uses this version). But i wasn't sure if a version like 4.x.xx was the indicated. Also there are a lot of other versions. I don't have the link of the archive with all those version (which are all free if i recall correctly). But i know it was from a microchip page.

[Siekmanski]

Good luck, it will be a lot of fun.  :t
Which book are you learning from?

[aw27]

I have used Atmel Studio 7 to make programs in ASM and C, mostly in C, and build them directly to Arduino boards. The advantage is twofold:
1- You don't have to mess with soldering irons which can be frustrating for a software-only guy. Arduino boards are not very expensive, some clones are even less expensive but may not be 100% compatible.
2- You don't have to use Arduino IDE which uses a very high-level sort of C++ which remembers Microsoft Foundation Classes and don't let you know what happens behind the scenes.

[daydreamer]

Microcontroller is fun,we had oldest intel 8008 cpu,250khz ,many clock cycles for simple operations,first learn and final projects was make something with help of microcontroller+ electronics,some made vectorgraphics game connecting two da converters to x,y inlets on oscilloscope
Its more fun to optimize on slow microcontroller,because each clock cycle matters much more than on a modern 3+ghz multicore
Assembler <-> digital electronic circuits is twoway
Wonder if two da converters,transistor controlling voltage-> analog /digital 16bit resolution could produce a MUL circuit?

[felipe]

The book name is: "Some assembly required. assembly language programming with the avr microcontroller ". I think is pretty good  :icon14:.
Btw i found the arm arquitecture very interesting  :icon14:. Also there are a lot of books teaching you the assembly language of an arm microcontroller/processor  :icon14:. I like that arm is used in many know devices, like phones, smartphones, tablets and even the raspberry pi  :icon14:. But what i found frustrated is that i couldn't find no one free and reliable assembler for it nor and IDE (mainly because the need for a simulator/debugger) with assembler for it. Keil tools looks great but they are not free  :(. I must suppose that an arm microcontroller is more expensive too  :redface:.
Anyway first i will be coding and learning the assembly for the microcontrollers that i found interesting and that count with a free assembler/simulator/debugger environment. I then, when i can (i'm truly poor right now  :redface:) i will buy all that is needed to donwload the code to a real microcontroller  :icon_mrgreen:.

[daydreamer]

Felipe,there was earlier a great ARM coder that made 3d game on a 180mhz arm device
Maybe he knows some assembly,maybe there is one cross assembler that can take different opcode data for different cpus

Me going to try the tool I and most are skilled with and make macros for opcodes: the great macro assembler we have here

[aw27]

By far and large the best ARM compiler is the ARM Keil. For learning purposes and knowing we have some limitations on the project allowed size (I think 32KB, but I am not updated on this) it is a free compiler, otherwise it is a very very expensive one. The alternative is the gcc/eclipse route which is much more difficult to tackle with. However, ARM is not as fun as AVR, much less documented which makes it more difficult to learn and with much more families and variations with a significantly higher price. And  trying to embrace it without some background is a pure suicide. Both the Keil and GCC support ASM but it is not intensively used nowadays because microprocessors are faster and have more memory than in the old days.

[daydreamer]

Z80 assembler and emulator free AW?
I found some dead links, I need emulator because I don't want total car
crash/ restore whole TI calculator all the time
Maybe good idea to share tiny add/ bitshift etc snippets for all who end up with assembly programming cpu with limitations like no div,mul,sqrt, no fpu etc share those mul,div... Snippets between us

[aw27]

Searching for Z80 emulator on google reveals some URLs, but I have not checked them up. May you can refine your search.

[felipe]

I think aw that you are exaggerating with the difficulty for the arm assembly programming. Also there are good books around and in keil page are good documentation too. The problem with the keil's tools is that i don't know if they support the microcontroller/processor that i want to program.  :idea:

[aw27]

The problem with the keil's tools is that i don't know if they support the microcontroller/processor that i want to program

Keil belongs to ARM. 

I think aw that you are exaggerating with the difficulty for the arm assembly programming

All right, good luck then.

[felipe]

@aw:
Of course i know that.
And i will continue with arm someday, probably...

As you said there are a lot of families and variations, so i don't know if keil supports what i want...Is not that hard anyway  :idea:

[felipe]

Siekmanski the build version of the avr studio that i have is the 684. So is not the same as you use. Btw, do you like to define (.def) the registers to some name? Like in .def temp =r17. I don't. But i think is ok to equate (.equ) the input/ouput registers, because they are named like literal numbers: like 0x17. So using .equ PORTB =0x17 seems ok to me. What do you think?  :idea: