bluehash 1,581 Posted October 21, 2015 Share Posted October 21, 2015 MSP-FET MSP430 Flash Emulation Tool Use coupon code 60WOW on the TI-EStore. pine, tripwire and oPossum 3 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
StefanoDS 6 Posted October 21, 2015 Share Posted October 21, 2015 Great tool, I bought it last year through a similar deal. I wish SanTI Claus would come up with something for Code Composer Studio. Perhaps a mini-licence to board-unlock all the Launchpads to their full potential with this FET. It breaks my heart to say this, because I love TI's tools and the 430, but STM really has delivered a breakthrough: the UNLIMITED Keil MDK for free for all their M0/M0+ dev boards (including the ultra-cheap Nucleos). It's true we have unlimited GNU compilers (they do too) but argueably one of the most professionally used IDEs/compilers for a more capable (not necessarily better) core at zero cost is something that really makes me scratch my head. Perhaps we could discuss this in the IDE/compilers or other MCU section. I know CCS is worth all its money, but some of us simply can't justify it at this point for non commercial use. chicken, veryalive and tripwire 3 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Fred 453 Posted October 21, 2015 Share Posted October 21, 2015 There have been deals on CCS on the past. I got mine ages ago for something like $25 with a Piccolo control stick. Still works for 6.1 too. If anyone from TI is listening, a few licences for bluehash to give away as prizes would be a great idea. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
yyrkoon 250 Posted October 22, 2015 Share Posted October 22, 2015 There have been deals on CCS on the past. I got mine ages ago for something like $25 with a Piccolo control stick. Still works for 6.1 too. If anyone from TI is listening, a few licences for bluehash to give away as prizes would be a great idea. For many of their boards though CCS is already free for non commercial use. I think I can even use it for the Beaglebone black, for free, for non commercial use, but . . . I kind of feel like when I used visual studio, on Windows. Sure, it works to get Windows application development done. But aside from that, how useful is it - Really ? Which is why now days I'm starting to lean heavily on platforms that use gcc, or at least a port of. I mean, learning how to use Visual Studio is ok, and CCS too. But using gcc, and related toolchains is knowledge I can take other places other than just for MS products, or TI only products. Does that sound evangelistic ? I'd like to think not, because for me, it's more about learning something useful that can be applied with other hardware, using a "unified system". Or at minimum at least something vaguely familiar. EDIT: Just as an example: Right now I am learning about PRU development on the Beaglebone black. I'm really rusty with ASM as a language, and despite the instruction set for the BBB's PRU being fairly minimal. I'm having a hard time understanding a lot that I really should know to be competent in using it. So, I decided to use the TI cgt-pru tool chain. It is, at least in my experience, no way standard. It's a TI specific toolchain for the PRU's, which is great, because it is free ( as in beer ), but it also comes with a proprietary set of libraries. Using CCS would make things easier in some regards, but I also feel like I would not learn much about the hardware using CCS with this hardware. So perhaps this toolchain is more geared towards people with a hardware background, in that using it with CCS would make things much easier on them. But I'm a software person with a high level software background by hobby. This means, either a) I use CCS and be another person who simply copies other peoples work, and modify it for my purposes. *Or* -b: I take the CLI ( non CCS ) approach, struggle through the whole learning process, until I arrive at some point where much of what I'm doing becomes clear . . . Both of these options in my opinion are simply unacceptable, but unfortunately for now, at least as far as I can tell there are no other options. With that said, if TI instead decided to use a port of gcc for the PRUs . . . Well, I would not have to relearn a new toolchain, but instead I could focus on the software specifics . . . making my life much easier. With all of that said, it is not TI's responsibility to make my life easier. But perhaps if is TI's responsibility to make monies - In which case, if making it possible for their user base(us) to use familiar tools, instead of having to learn proprietary tools. Perhaps that makes them more monies in the long run. Through additional sales. In addition, the reason why I like so many TI products is that there are OSS toolchains that work with the hardware I use from them. Take that away from me, and well, I'll probably move to something else. tripwire 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
chicken 630 Posted October 22, 2015 Share Posted October 22, 2015 I was developing professionally with Borland C, Visual Studio, and another C++ IDE I can't remember the name of. I found it pretty trivial to get started with CCS with that background. All those IDE's are organized in a very similar way. Certainly seems less painful than manually messing with linker options and make files. That being said, shelling out a few hundred dollars for each platform is definitely not something I'd want to do either. So far I'm within the 16k for MSP430, but getting close :-/ tripwire and yyrkoon 2 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
yyrkoon 250 Posted October 22, 2015 Share Posted October 22, 2015 I was developing professionally with Borland C, Visual Studio, and another C++ IDE I can't remember the name of. I found it pretty trivial to get started with CCS with that background. All those IDE's are organized in a very similar way. Certainly seems less painful than manually messing with linker options and make files. That being said, shelling out a few hundred dollars for each platform is definitely not something I'd want to do either. So far I'm within the 16k for MSP430, but getting close :-/ Hi Chicken, Sure, "getting started" is usually pretty easy migrating from one IDE to another. But understanding what the linker is doing is sometimes very important. Such is the case for me, right now, using the cgt-pru toolchain for the Beaglebone PRU's. Also, I think make is great. I do not know nearly as much as I'd like about it. But it's awesome most of the time. Eventually I intend to buckle down and learn much about make, autotools, etc. However, I think the biggest distinction here is "professional" versus "hobbyist". As a hobbyist, I often have the luxury of picking and choosing what I want to learn. Anyway, I love the fact that I can write a simple makefile, use my text editor of choice, and compile from the command line without having a bloated piece of expensive software getting in my way. Keep in mind, when I say this, that I like a lot of things that Visual Studio, and CCS have to offer. I just find that I do not usually need all that. chicken 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
chicken 630 Posted October 22, 2015 Share Posted October 22, 2015 Sure, I love doing my extended walks on Sundays. But during weekdays I just use that oversized piece of steel to get to places ;-) yyrkoon 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
yyrkoon 250 Posted October 22, 2015 Share Posted October 22, 2015 Sure, I love doing my extended walks on Sundays. But during weekdays I just use that oversized piece of steel to get to places ;-) Well, it's not quite the same thing. For instance, from what I understand. You can use the MSP430 gcc toolchain in CCS right now. No size limitations. So, if *we* understand the toolchain better, we could probably fairly easily figure out how to set this up. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
yyrkoon 250 Posted October 22, 2015 Share Posted October 22, 2015 Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is: Using make, and gcc from the command line really is not all that difficult. In fact, I think in many cases it's much easier / faster once you become accustomed to it. Honestly. Do also keep in mind that I'm not an expert with make or gcc, and that I spent a good amount of time using tools like Visual Studio, with languages such as VB.NET, C#, etc. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
chicken 630 Posted October 22, 2015 Share Posted October 22, 2015 Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty much a bare metal guy when it comes to MCU programming. That's why I love my MSP430s But I'd rather spend my limited brain capacity and time on mastering the target, instead of all the nitty gritty details of the tool chain to compile, link, flash and debug it. Of course it helps to know where to tweak a few linker options or what a map file is and how to read it. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
chicken 630 Posted October 22, 2015 Share Posted October 22, 2015 Getting back to your PRU example, I would probably dig into the libraries and data sheets, but not worry too much about the magic pixie dust CCS adds to get from source code to a running program. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Fred 453 Posted October 22, 2015 Share Posted October 22, 2015 Also, I hear the MSP-FET is 60% off. ;-) tripwire, yyrkoon, spirilis and 1 other 4 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
yyrkoon 250 Posted October 22, 2015 Share Posted October 22, 2015 Point taken Fred, heh. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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