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Coldfire development on Linux host

This is a copy of a post which I have already sent to comp.os.linux.m68K and alt.os.linux.suse. ..............................

I need to develop a smallish (10KB asm & maybe 10K of C & lots of fast trigonometry) embeddeded controller application for a design job coming up.

My preferred development host is a i586 PC running SUSE 10.0.

The target CPU is (at this stage) a Coldfire MCF5407 or similar running raw code, with no formal operating system.

The customer is already using Linux for all his work & office admin tasks and would prefer to be able to continue development on same after I finish.

My question is: what combinations of software & hardware have you folks found to work reasonably painlessly for a development chain which covers

  1. assembly,
  2. download,
  3. flash program,
  4. single-step debug?

Hardware: I have examined the BDM pod article by W. Mohat from the Freescale Coldfire forum & I am considering building it. BTW, I could make the boards available very cheaply if anyone was interested. I would probably replace the GAL chip with 74ACTxx or similar logic just to avoid the need for an expensive upgrade to my PAL programmer. Discussion invited.

The decision on whether to go that path would rest on the availability of Linux-based host tools to complete the development chain mentioned above.

Software: I downloaded the CodeWarrior Linux Platform Evaluation suite from Freescale to see what I thought of it, but have not been able to get past the registration/authorisation phase before it crashes with segment violation access errors. I am sure it is a fine thing but I may wait a little longer before forking out the 1500+ dollars for the real thing.

In the meantime, this project is coming up & I have to prepare on a low budget. Any suggestions please?

By the way, has anyone succeeded in getting Protel '98 PCB software to work with Wine? My local (Australian) PCB maufacturer likes Protel files, otherwise I would go for Eagle. I can joyously snip the last connection to uSoft Windows once I solve this.

Jim Adamthwaite.

Reply to
Jim Adamthwaite
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I know Cybertec here in Australia did work with Coldfire development tools under Linux, including selling a BDM pod commercially. IIRC the tools were gcc/gdb-based.

Their website doesn't appear to mention it anymore, but if you contacted them I'm sure they could point you in the right direction?!?

Regards,

--
Mark McDougall, Engineer
Virtual Logic Pty Ltd, 
21-25 King St, Rockdale, 2216
Ph: +612-9599-3255 Fax: +612-9599-3266
Reply to
Mark McDougall

Looking at Freescale's website, they're suggesting that Codewarrior Linux Platform Edition is $5395 or $7015 per seat.

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That's what put us off using Codewarrior for some basic app development we're doing. We're currently trying to just use the GNU tools (for Win32/cygwin) provided by Logic PD for their Coldfire M5475EVB evaluation board. It's basically just a pre-packaged m68k gcc cross-compiler which you could probably build yourself from sources if you're going to use a Linux box as the host.

In fact, the latest Coldfire chip that the supplied version of GCC supports as a compiler switch is the m5407 (ie. -m5407), there's later versions (not prebuilt and supplied by Logic) which have the -mcfv4e switch - although it hasn't been a problem for us using the -m5407 switch with a M5475 board so far.

D
Reply to
David Hearn

The obvious choice is to use gcc and gdb. Some of the high budget commercial tools may work under Linux - they often have useful extra features, but the price can be very high. I think Metrowerks CodeWarrior is free for small code sizes (it certainly is for other targets), but I don't know about running it under linux.

As for gcc, you can simply download the latest gcc source and compile it for cross development. There are plenty of tutorials out there showing how to do that. For debugging, you can get a P&E Micro parallel port debugger (speed is not too important for small programs) and code from the sourceforge "bdm" project. Cybertec also makes bdm debuggers.

For a middle ground, you could go for a commercially supported gcc package, such as from Cybertec or Redhat gnupro.

Reply to
David Brown

Metrowerks/Freescale do a Special Edition of Codewarrior for Windows which is 'free' in that it's *only* supplied with Coldfire evaluation boards and not available separately, although I never got a copy with our evaluation board (probably as we got ours - M5475EVB) from Logic PD, not from Freescale). The Special Edition version is code size limited.

D
Reply to
David Hearn

I tried to contact them via their web page, but got no answer. Maybe it was just a fluke?

Eric

Reply to
Eric

Sounds good! I can't understand why P & E charges so much for a parallel port BDM device...

I think it's P & E who will also sell you a nice gcc/gdb setup for about $900. That's a pretty good price for free software. But then you should be willing to pay that much to have them configure a few things for you...

Coldfire tools are still priced like they were a few years ago. Which is sad because the rest of the industry has lowered their prices. I'm afraid this might be a signal that Coldfire devices aren't very popular. If there was a good marketplace, the prices would have come down.

Eric

Reply to
Eric

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