Newbie Again. Where to start?

The easiest MCU to start with, which has devices large enough for Linux is ARM. Start with either the Phillips or Atmel ARM MCUs. These are too small for Linux, but once you are comfortable with the MCUs, you can use one of the bigger ARMs, and add enough memory for Linux.

You can also buy small ARM based modules that has Linux already in flash, or a linux port available. Often it is ucLinux. Ask in the comp.os.linux.embedded for suitable modules.

Regards Anton Erasmus

Anton, thanks for your reply.

I think I have to buy programmer and evaluation board for ARM MCUs. Where can i buy these?Or is there any way to do this by myself? Can you give me some websites?

Thanks again...

Atmel sells a development kit for their ARM9 MCU that has a full linux port. If you want to use something that you can use directly in a final product, you can try one of the modules from

Regards Anton Erasmus

We have a discussion on "hardware platform" at "comp.os.linux.embedded". In particular, we are checking into the xscale arm. We are looking for help in porting a boot loader (2K bytes max), kernel (USB host) and Jtag tools. We are willing to provide the necessary hardware and other incentives.

Basically, we need to bootstrap from the memory mode of a CF and load the kernel and/or file system from the rest (or another IDE device). The full system (128M) must support USB and I2C devices.

We will continue on comp.os.linux.embedded.

Why not stick with pics for now if you are a bit familiar with them and have used them. Can do quite a lot with pics. Easy to use.

Why not try writing your own small operating system ?

has lots of examples you can look at.

has some good tutorials.

If you wanted to use c or other language there are a few free compilers.

Jal - a pascal like language

C

hitech have a free limited version PICC LITE of their compiler for the 16f pics

If you are using 18f pics there is the student version of microchip C18 compiler

Alex

thank you all.

Alex, The reason, that I want to use Atmel ARM, is I'm going to port linux to my embedded device. But I don't know anything about ARM. I think I'm going to do what you said. Because I don't have any programmer or development board for ARM.

Anyway, thanks for your advice.

You can get very cheap ARM development boards from various places. Try

Regards Anton Erasmus

Is there any document or website to build my own development kit for ARM?

Start with one of these cheap development boards. They come with schematics and examples to get you going. Once you have more knowledge about how everything sticks together, you can start designing something yourself. You need a thorough understanding of how everything works before you have any hope of getting Linux to run on your own hardware. Trying to run when you haven't even crawled yet is, is a recipy for disaster.

Regards Anton Erasmus