I want some help on MCF5282, the ColdFire series of Processors.
First and foremost, where do i start off from, considering that am pretty new to the ColdFire arch???
What are my options as well as opensource Compilers , Debuggers are concerned??? Is there something based of the Eclipse Platform , like there are plugins for ARM???
Also, where can i find some Online Tutorials, that can help me kickstart my work???
Any useful inputs will be very helpful at this stage.
Start with one of our development kits. Working Coldfire hardware and software and not much $. We are in the late beta process of releasing an eclipse based IDE and debugging environment that will make our offerings even better.
I did some work with ColdFire processors and the GNU toolchains. For my last project I used the following components:
GNU C Compiler (built myself with target = m68k-elf). Get this on
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P&E Micro BDM interface. If you use the same debug interface you should take a look at the m68k-bdm tools website on
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I did some patches for the Coldfire 2 cores which are available there to support more registers. In any case you must download at least the MCF5282 RAMBAR/FLASHBAR patch.
Insight debugger - You have to apply the patches from the m68k-bdm tools distribution.
CFInit - A free tool from MicroAPL to generated coldfire startup code. This tool is a must because it really cuts down the time required for bootstrapping your hardware. You can find it at
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The other project I am aware of is Codesourcey at
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which supply a working C compiler. What is interesting is that they have done a small wrapper which supports the GDB remote protocol for 68k and uses the P&E micro libraries (UNITCFZ). I have not tested this but it sound like a good idea.
I also tried tried a code limited debugger available for free at the P&E Micro website
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Sadly their debugger is limited to C code and no C++ support is available.
You can take a look at the FreeRTOS Coldfire available at
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This port includes some documentation, a working piece of software (startup scripts, linker scripts, ...).
Having provided all these choices I have to say that I would not build a toolchain myself (At least not at the company I am working for). The final results where very good but the time spent stands in no relation to a commercial license. Anyway I did this at home and out of interest so this was not an issue for me.
Your website and your products sound very interesting. Could you comment on the debugger options because looking at the pinouts I see there are no BDM signals anymore. Do your tools provide an onboard monitor suitable for communication with GDB?
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