I am interested in homebrewing a Coldfire MFC5282 microcontroller based system, (Actually, If I can figure things out I want to make a few, at first real easy, just using the internal ram/flash and serial port, and eventually adding more goodies such as ethernet and external ram/flash, sd interface, and what I really want to get to is being able to use DIMM memory for some data collection stuff I want to try.
After reading various datasheets and other forums (forua ?) it is not clear to me what the options are for bringing up a board for the first time.
Are there other options besides pre-flashing a memory chip and having the CPU execute from there upon startup ? Is the BDM useful for loading a program to internal flash when you have a bare unprogrammed part ?
I think I found bootloaders available on the net for coldfire, but I have no clue as to my options regarding how to get them into the flash.
I am already slightly familiar with using coldfire, as I currently have a netburner development kit (for 5270). I basically want to see if I can build my own, and then eventually customize it with the hardware that I want.
Are there any Coldfire homebrew pages around, that really get into designing your own board ?
I'm more of a software weenie, but once upon a time I actually did design some microprocessor based systems (in the 80s, so it has been awhile, back then employers would let you design/build the hardware and then the software to run on it. Now I only develop SW at work). So please be gentle :)
Thanks ! Joe