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MSP430 Compilers and Tool question

I am looking into the MSP430 series of microcontrollers for a project.

I have surveyed the tools and I found the following companies make C compilers for it:

  1. Quadravox
  2. IAR
  3. Rowley & Associates
  4. HiTech
  5. ICC430
  6. MSPGCC (free)

Hardware/JTAG debugging toolwise I see:

  1. Softbaugh (USBP(E), USBPPRO)
  2. Elprotronic
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What did you think of the compiler? The hardware JTAG debugging interfaces? Cost for the tools? (I need just one seat). IAR seems to expensive and overhyped.

I tried out AVR-GCC one time but found the lack of useful pragmas/macros for microcontrollerish things to be frustrating. I have used the HiTech C compiler for PIC and also the CCS PIC compiler. Both were good, CCS had a lot of nifty features (#use rs232, #fuse, etc).

John.

Reply to
John
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I like the Rowley tools. They work very well with the Olimex FET (only $9), and support is excellent.

You ought to join the MSP430 Yahoo group:

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Leon

Leon

Reply to
Leon Heller

You missed Imagecraft

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I tried doing some benchmarks with a couple of them and found the IDEs to be awkward at best. I don't remember for certain which ones they were, so I won't name names.

Reply to
Everett M. Greene

I've been using ICC430 since it came out in Beta a few years back. It's worked out well for me. There are still a few times when I spot some extraneous register loads in the assembly code, but there's nothing that has been too objectionable.

I use the included NOIce debugger and either the MSP430 FET JTAG dongle or a homemade jtag dongle for programming and debugging.

Mark Borgerson

Reply to
Mark Borgerson

John schrieb:

I am using MSPGCC with KDevelop as a frontend for sourcecodedebugging. Works great. It took me some time though to figure out how to set things up. If you want to have a quick start you are better of with Quadravox or Rowley.

Markus

Reply to
Markus Mandl

When I started MSP430 IAR/ICC430 was the only choice. It's very good. Little niggles (like low power mode from C) are really only due to me not having paid for support. The version I use remains very applicable and produces compact code. Integration with Texas's FET modules are fine, and all I need. They provide rapid JTAG programming with a breakpoint or two. Look them up. If you want to do anything more serious like tracing you'll need something more expensive.

However, I seriously hope you can find a better value for money toolset. The Texas rep suggested I look at Rowley (make of that what you will); he didn't seem to know about mspgcc. I have used Hitech PIC compilers and they're the best, worth a look for any target.

Best Regards, Mike.

--
Mike Page BEng(Hons) MIEE                 www.eclectic-web.co.uk
    "Ask a Liberal Democrat, while he still knows everything"
Reply to
Mike Page

IAR != ICC.

A limited version of the IAR MSP430 compiler comes with (or came with -- haven't gotten any, lately) the TI dev kits.

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ICC430 is a completely different compiler.

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--
Rich Webb   Norfolk, VA
Reply to
Rich Webb

Yes, it's unfortunate coincidence that we name our products the same way IAR calls their command line tools. Usually it's not so bad since their product name is official EW. We are bumping our version #, and I think the official name will become ICCV7 for ???, e.g. ICCV7 for MSP430. This hopefully will make it a little less confusing.

--
// richard
http://www.imagecraft.com
Reply to
Richard F. Man

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