msp430gcc on Beaglebone

[USWaterRockets 57]

Let me begin by saying nobody here is a GCC expert. We've managed to build GCC cross compilers for different CPUs/uCs under Windows and Linux successfully.

 

Would it be possible to compile the MSP430 CGG to run on a Beaglebone, with the MSP430 as the target device? Is seems like it should work. We're looking for any "gotchas" we might encounter.

 

Thanks for any advice!

 

[spirilis 1,265]

Can't think of any off the top of my head.  Back when I first got my BBB, I actually built a GCC compiler for the Renesas rx-elf target (was playing with the RX boards back then).  I recommend putting a nice external HDD, SSD or at least flash drive on the USB port and using that for all the I/O of course.  I think the rx-elf-gcc build took 6 hours or so.

[USWaterRockets 57]

Can't think of any off the top of my head.  Back when I first got my BBB, I actually built a GCC compiler for the Renesas rx-elf target (was playing with the RX boards back then).  I recommend putting a nice external HDD, SSD or at least flash drive on the USB port and using that for all the I/O of course.  I think the rx-elf-gcc build took 6 hours or so.

That's great news! Thanks for the info!

[pabigot 355]

I agree there should be no difficulties in building an msp430-elf toolchain on the BBB other than the time it takes to do a build.

 

I'm curious, though: why do you want to do this? That is, what goal requires the ability to build new MSP430 firmware images on an embedded Linux device rather than select from pre-compiled images or request a customized image from a build service via network? The only one I can think of is using the BBB as a development platform, which is just painful.

[David Bender 28]

I build images on my desktop, then access them from my raspberry-pi via ssh-fs...no need to build them locally.

[Rickta59 589]

I agree there should be no difficulties in building an msp430-elf toolchain on the BBB other than the time it takes to do a build.

 

I'm curious, though: why do you want to do this? That is, what goal requires the ability to build new MSP430 firmware images on an embedded Linux device rather than select from pre-compiled images or request a customized image from a build service via network? The only one I can think of is using the BBB as a development platform, which is just painful.

At one point I had the msp430-elf-gcc and mspdebug going on the beaglebone. My thought was to use an msp430 as a swiss army knife interface chip. I thought being able to use the msp430 as a software IC might be useful. I never went very far with it. They released an assembler and c compiler for the PRU chips on the beagle bone so it didn't make much sense to go any further with it.

 

BTW: using the BBB over ssh as an ARM development platform isn't that bad if you are used to command line utilities and makefiles.

 

-rick

[USWaterRockets 57]

At one point I had the msp430-elf-gcc and mspdebug going on the beaglebone. My thought was to use an msp430 as a swiss army knife interface chip. I thought being able to use the msp430 as a software IC might be useful. I never went very far with it. They released an assembler and c compiler for the PRU chips on the beagle bone so it didn't make much sense to go any further with it.

 

BTW: using the BBB over ssh as an ARM development platform isn't that bad if you are used to command line utilities and makefiles.

 

-rick

That's the intent, But in this case the need is driven by an automated script that would adjust the source for the MSP430 as needed on first boot and then build/download the firmware. The idea is to minimize the variations of the source code.