HELP: Newbie questions on Embedded Programming / Viper-lite 200MHz

If you mean the one featured here:-

You will need a suitable power supply, some way of keeping the board securely held, a PC for developing the software and the necessary cable to connect the board to your PC.

If, on the other hand you are looking at:-

Then it looks like it is all in the kit.

Not sure which flavour.

The Arcom website has a lot of information on their kits and they have a website that shows the book you're talking about so I assume that's the one

I have one of their embedded Linux kits, I think it may be an earlier Viper, but it's in a metal enclosure and shipped with a power supply. We added a LCD display and keyboard but it easier to telnet or use the serial port for command line work.

Arcom has a bootable Linux version for their boards so you can boot right up and start playing. For any serious work you wouldn't want to use flash file system but it's easy to mount a network drive and do your work there. It's easier if that's done from another Linux PC but totally doable from a Windows PC as well.

If you want to compile and build programs on your Windows PC you can use the Arcom cross-compiler tools (aka. toolchain) to do your editing and building on the PC and then run on your Viper. The Viper is a 200MHz ARM so it's fine for quickie tests but your X GHz PC is going to be faster.

Andrew

The link mentioned by "andrew" is correct. The hardware and the text book is also shown at the bottom of the link mentioned.

My PC runs on Windows XP only. I guess this board ($295) comes with a LCD. For command line work can I use the Hyperterminal from Windows XP? (Start->All Programs->Accessories->Communication->Hyperterminal)

Does this mean that I write programs on my XP machine (in the Hyperterminal) and hookup the kit to my computer and compile the programs on the Viper-kit and run the executables? This means that the C compiler is there on the Viper, along with the debugger, too??

I am totally new to embedded systems and hardware in general. I'm trying to learn embedded systems programmin by using Michael Barr's book and this kit. I don't have linux running on my PC and also I don't have a C compiler on my PC; I'm assuming that all the stuff I need to do the basic examples in the book for example: gcc compiler and the gdb debugger (GNU tools) are resident on the Viper-kit.

I know I'm asking lots of silly questions, but I want to make sure that I've all the tools to do programming before I buy the kit.

Thanks again SadaYama

what you need:

1. editor: to edit the source code. You may also buy an IDE.
2. cross-toolchains: it consists of compiler, debugger and some other related tools
3. serial port or ethernet: used to download the binary file to the target board

You can write the program on your PC but you'd use an editor, not Hyperterminal, to write the program. You can then transfer it to your Viper using FTP or similar. For your very first test, however, it's easier to run the editor (e.g. vi) on the viper. Once you hook up Hyperterminal you should be able to:

vi hello.c gcc hello.c ./a.out

and your hello world program should run.

Yes, Arcom ships CDs with the prebuilt "toolchain" that allows you to compile programs on your XP PC and then run them on your Viper. Running GDB on your PC with the program running on the Viper requires a remote debugging connection but that's pretty straightforward.

Not silly at all. It can be quite confusing. The nice thing abuot an embedded Linux kit is that one way or another you can get all the tools you need for free and the time you invest in learning the basics of embedded Linux transfer well to other platforms. There are lots of choices for ARM-based Linux platforms and the one you describe seems like a good choice as a start.

Andrew

Andrew: Thanks lot for your reply. I'll have more questions for you once I receive the Viper-lite kit and start doing the examples. Michael Barr & Anthony Massa's book 'Programming Embedded Systems' is my 1st book. Do you recommend any other books for a beginner to get good concepts. I do have good background in Unix operating System, C programming, Unix utilities, Basic idea of computer architecture etc.,

T h a n k s again, Sam

____________________________________________________________ P. S. When I searched here, I found that lots of people were recommending the below as a 2nd book.

"An Embedded Software Primer" by David E. Simon. with Chapter titles: [1] A First Look at Embedded Systems [2] Hardware Fundamentals for the Softwaer Engineer [3] Advanced hardware Fundamentals [4] Interrupts [5] Survey of Software Architectures [6] Indroduction to Real-Time Operating Systems [7] More Operating System Services [8] Basic Design Using a Real-Time Operating System [9] Embedded Software Development Tools [10] Debugging Techniques [11] An Example System

I actually don't have a good embedded systems book myself but where I work we have a lot of online resources in addition to what's already available for free. I do have one book specific to Embedded Linux Programming (Building Embedded Linux Systems

Andrew