STM

How about voting with your feet (or pocketbook): The Stellaris/TI Cortex-M3's are quite useable, and the documentation is findable.

I really like the Stellaris peripherals -- partially because of the rich electrical options like settable drive and input anti-glitch, and partially because the folks at Luminary did such a good job of answering the question "How can we make a nice microcontroller peripheral interface, if we had oceans of unused memory space available?"

Thanks, Tauno.

I guess that I am going to have to find another chip, perhaps the Stellaris, as you suggest.

It is so strange that a large company like STM seems bent on destroying their Cortex M3 line. Lots of folks are mad over it, too.

Joe

I appreciate the input, Tim.

Due to your and Tauno's comments, I will give them a shot.

It is a shame as I have several of the STM Discovery evaluation boards. Does Stellaris have one/some. Never mind, I will go see if they do.

Joe

I have one in my hand: Stellaris LM3S6965 Ethernet Eval Board. The part is EKI-LM3S6965.

It has an USB interface for JTAG, and the JTAG can also be used as the USB-JTAG dongle for your own target board. The board runs on power supply from the USB, so it does not need a separate supply.

I used the board to make my first Stellaris construction, running finally on a LM3S818, with minimal modifications needed in the code. The project started in late November, I received the eval board in early December, and the final unit has been running in beta tests for two weeks now. The code is about 7 kiB, including a simple multi-thread kernel.

The Stellaris family of chips is made so that the peripherals are very compatible with minimal changes required between the different chips. There are even read-only feature registers which make it simple for the software to see which features are present.

The software development was made with GNU tools: the GCC suite and GDB, which I compiled from sources and run under Linux (Ubuntu 10). The JTAG interface is run with OpenOCD.

There are some development packages in the kit, but I wanted a toolset that can also be used with my ARM7TDMI projects.

Have a look at: .

I rather like this idea, generally. I was at a seminar at Avnet a while back where someone pitched a new line of microcontrollers: pin layouts tended to be compatible within package size, and the built-in peripherals were functionally identical between parts. Whether the chip used an 8-bit or 16-bit core depended on the part number. ISTR it was ST, but with their web site the way it is, we may never know for sure.

Mel.

There are two problems with Stellaris:

- high power consumption compared to other vendors' M3

- numerous errors in silicon - esp. RTC and USB/related Due to these problems we have switched from Luminary/TI to NXP.

I hope Ulf is watching this thread and will hopefully feed back this mess to his Atmel co-workers that they don't get any ideas about a website redesign. :-)

Ie: Atmel marketing executive: Ohh, ohh: ST just had a major shiny redesign of it's website and we need to do the same.

(The above occurred to me when I realised that marketing people watch one another and I hope the marketing people at the other microcontroller companies do not also decide they want a ST style flash website as well.)

Simon.

I am starting a project based on an STM32. Must stick with it, the hardware was designed before I joined the team and we have code libraries depending on the STM32 family peripherals.

Therefore, this weekend I spent a painful couple of hours 'exploring' the STM site and downloading anything related to the CPU and/or my project, so I don't have to visit it again. (Or at least not until next project.)

I can not understand this trend, in technically oriented web sites, to prefer "dynamic content", Flash animation, pop-ups, etc. to just providing a straightforward path to the information you customers need. STM's web site immediately brings to mind the "The inmates are running the asylum" quote. (The sparkfun site is a good counterexample)

Now, things would be much better if Congress would pass a law forcing all web developers to test their creations via a 4800 baud dial-up link. Please call your Senator...

-- Roberto Waltman

Thanks, Tauno.

I am seeing a price of $69.00 for that board. Can I get it cheaper? I am putting too many dollars in boards and haven't gotten one to do anything as yet. Part of that is due to my ignorance in trying to transition from 8 bit processors and terminology to 32 bit with new and unaccusomed jargon.

It sounds like you have made great progress.

Joe

A few years ago we had a debate about NXP doing something similar

fails totally for me with flash + javascript disabled. Just a permanent "loading page..." box.

Enabling javascript does seem to let it work.

I always use the "ICs" site , this does seem to work well for me,

I see there is a preview of a new "beta" NXP site - now why do I get that sinking feeling.... ?

(Actually it is at least browseable from my quick look)

I remember that very clearly. :-)

At least they didn't mess things up as much as ST have done.

True, but I never use the main NXP website when I am looking for NXP documentation as I use Google to search websites (it's usually much quicker than a website's own search function) and Google always seems to point directly to the ics.nxp.com website.

Agreed. I don't need to have Javascript enabled when browsing pages on this website which have been indexed by Google.

For example, I have recently been downloading a range of documentation and example code associated with the LPC3131 and have had no problems with this.

It's annoying that you have to enable Javascript to browse that website, but with NoScript that's not really too much of a concern for me. My real objection is when you have to install plugins to browse a site.

BTW, there's one feature on this new NXP website which I really like and that is the ability to download all related app notes/user manuals/etc for a specific part as a combined zip file in one operation.

Simon.

That is a feature of the main nxp.com site too, but I don't think it is on the ICs one.

Roberto, thanks for the input.

I just don't understand why companies make their customers work to get information with which to buy their products.

If I want to sell products, I make everything as smooth as possible to gain sales.

I think that there is alot of laziness and incompetence in within companies today and particularly, this includes management.

It seems that pride in knowing that you have done a job very well, is sorely lacking.

Personally, I receive great joy in knowing that I have done a great job in an endeavor EVEN IF NO ONE ELSE KNOWS.

I suspect that a lot of fellows in this business feel the same way but there are those that can't even conceive of the concept.

Joe