Toolchain for the MC68332

Le 07/04/2011 21:03, David Brown a écrit :

Does this not already obsolete ?

Years ago, when the 68332 was fresh, I used a Swiss toolchain called Hi-Cross, but I was not too happy with it.

For maintenance, I generated a GNU toolchain (gcc, as, ld & co), and used it. At least it is more stably existent than any of the commercial offerings.

I have heard of Hi Cross, but never had any experience with them.

For my own use, I have an old gcc compiler (2.9x, IIRC). And if I do significantly more work with the 68332, then I'll make a more up-to-date build of gcc. I'm just trying to collect options and ideas, so that when I discuss it with the customer I'll be able to give them a selection of options.

Freescale, even back when they were called Motorola, tried to kill off the MC68332 and move customers over to more modern designs (first their PPC-based MPC5xx microcontrollers, then Coldfire devices). And while most new designs did use the newer devices, the MC68332 never went completely out of fashion - Freescale was unable to stop making them, because customers refused to stop buying them.

In my company, modern versions of our designs that were previously MC68332-based have either Coldfire (typically MCF523x) or PPC (MPC5xx or MPC5xxx) devices. But we still have cards that use the MC68332, and customers still buy them - you don't change these things and make your software and hardware incompatible without good reason.

I can't go into the reasoning here, but the situation is that we have a customer that will need to start working on code on these devices, and therefore needs appropriate toolchains. So I am trying to get an overview of the options available.

Le 09/04/2011 13:02, David Brown a écrit :

I understand.

For the moment i'm employed as an independent consultant in a company which has historically extensively used the good-old Motorola CPU's (MC68020 and so on ..) for 6U chassis systems. I support from time to time software guys who are using Microtec compiler and Lauterbach hardware debug tools on Solaris (or Sun/OS), for some reasons, moving to other moderns software/Hardware tools is irrelevant in that sort of project where Safety and Long Term Support are sensitive criterias. So i understand your situation... Someone here has suggested using GNU-Tools for this CPU line (M68K). My experience on that point is that building a cross-compiler is quite easy from GNU-Toolchain nevertheless installing robust hardware debugging tools based on gdb is far from a simple task.

Good Luck, Habib.

I have plenty of experience at building gcc cross-compilers (though in recent years I've been a bit lazy, and got them ready-made). So I am happy to do that. But different people have different criteria for what they look for in a toolchain - gcc does not suit everyone. Thus I'm trying to figure out what is available, so that my customer can have a choice.

I am also aware that hardware debugging tools are going to be one of the bigger issues here. Part of it depends on how much the customer is willing to spend on such tools (I have no idea as yet). Some high-end Ethernet-based debuggers can use gdb debugging protocol directly, and are therefore easy to use - if the cost is not an issue. Because the MC68332 has not been popular for new projects in recent times, there seems to be a lack of modern cheap USB tools as you find for ARMs, Coldfires, PPCs, and other cores - P&E Micro make one, but I am not sure yet what tools support it. (There are also technical reasons why the BDM on the CPU32 is not as easy to deal with as many jtag debugging interfaces - you can't just wire up an FTDI2232 chip directly.) It will probably be easier for the customer to get an old PC with a parallel port, than to get a USB debugger!

Le 10/04/2011 11:29, David Brown a écrit : Hi David,

You're right ... nowadays finding a debug tool for MC68K is really a hard task ... finding one with commercial support is quite impossible even those ponted by Freescale ... they insist to move to Risc-M68K (Coldfire) :-(

If there is no OSes running on the MC68332 target (bare-metal), you can use the old-school style by running a basic software monitor 5Rom monitor) on it and after loading user code on RAM, putting an halt state on your code ...etc but those old-days are far far behind us.

We did this at school 25 years ago on some old G96 and old VME systems (Themis and Motorola MVME as i remember)

Habib.

Hiware, bought by Motorola/Metrowerks to be assimilated, IIRC.

I wonder what's considered "too expensive" by David. I guess the usual suspects (Lauterbach, iSystem etc.) still offer tools. iSystem winIDEA supports the 68332, and their hardware comes with USB and Ethernet.

Oliver

I don't know yet what is "too expensive", that's why I'm collecting all ideas I can find relatively easily. Once I have some ideas, and have talked to the customer, I can figure out what is realistic and start talking directly to appropriate suppliers.

iSystem is now another point on my list (though I've never liked their IDE myself). Thanks for that hint.

David