Re: Microcontroller board prototyping.

You are clearly way ahead of me. And I deeply respect your efforts. It's 
a big important field, obviously.

I don't claim expert. But I recently re-read some old AVR assembly 
language tutorial by Gerhard Schmidt. Many years ago I revised his AVR 
assembler, written in FreePascal, using the old Unix editor NEdit. I 
love long descriptive names for functions and variables, and was amazed 
the assembler still worked after my assault.

I don't know if I read it before, but he also had a small serial port 
ATMEGA8515 control program for PWM and used the ancient ANSI terminal 
escape sequences to colorize his output. I had done an 8515 interrupt 
controlled serial IO and added terminal control characters to the 
template. And separately had done both a FreePascal and TCL terminal 
escape sequences coloring control. These beautiful modern Linux terminal 
emulators can do a lot of user interfacing.

The reason I like the 8515 is because it has external memory capability. 
And old Atmel Studio 4 really helped me understand, to the extent I do, 
programming these complex little chips. I'm just hoping to do more with 
what I have.

I'm glad this thread encouraged so many wonderful people to teach me 
more. Thanks again.


Robert Gilbertson wrote:
> Rick,
>
> I have used both the STK500 and Atmel-ICE programmers and think they are
> overpriced.
> I have migrated to OpenOCD on a Pi.
> Also avoids vendor lock-in to Atmel and allows ST Micro, Renesas,
> Freescale, NXP or other uC's to be used.
>
> Lady Ada has a nice tutorial on her site beginning here:
> https://learn.adafruit.com/programming-microcontrollers-using-openocd-on-raspberry-pi
>
> It allows programming many uC that use SWD or JTAG and has a debugger.
>
> Might also check out some of the other dev boards Adafruit has.
> Elecrow's crowtail or crowduino boards may be of interest also.
> Elecrow also manufactures inexpensive boards if you are proficient with
> KiCad or Eagle and don't mind soldering.
>
> Happy hacking,
> Bob
>
> On Thursday 30/01/2020 at 12:50 pm, Rick Engebretson wrote:
>> As always, thanks for your feedback.
>>
>> I have a nice breadboard, and some nice proto boards from "Protostack,"
>> and 3 Atmel STK500 development kits, and AVR Studio on 5 machines, and
>> chips, and working software. I'm ready to have some soldering done.
>>
>> I would have replied to your kind response earlier. But about 8:30 AM I
>> heard a clang outside and a little up the dirt road an old guy was
>> climbing out of his truck in the ditch. He was very lucky he broke the
>> sign post or he would have rolled it. He was in his 80s and it took two
>> trips from the towing company in Hinckley to get him out. The towing
>> company needed a bigger truck and a helper. It cost me $200 to get the
>> old guy down the road without a heart attack, and he was wearing my
>> brand new pair of dry wool socks leaving his wet socks on my wood stove.
>> The old guy was great to meet. But I need civilization.
>>
>> I've tried FreeGeeks. Maybe some day I'll donate some nice stuff when I
>> think they have people who know what it is.
>>
>>
>> Iznogoud wrote:
>> > Let's make this topic useful.
>> >
>> >>
>> >> If I knew how to change topics I really want to find somebody who knows
>> >> how to solder simple microcontroller boards. Are there any prototyping
>> >> shops left in the city?? I would love to do some business with some
>> >> civilized humans.
>> >>
>> >
>> > You do not need a soldered board to prototype. Use a "bread board"
>> and put
>> > it together. Make it work first, then worry about soldering. That is
>> how to
>> > do it.
>> >
>> > Also, learning to solder --I am terrible at it-- is a great skill to
>> have.
>> > And having the right tools for doing it greatly accelerates quality
>> and speed.
>> > But right now you do not need this to prototype something.
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
>> > [email protected]
>> > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list
>> _______________________________________________
>> TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
>> [email protected]
>> http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
> [email protected]
> http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list
>
_______________________________________________
TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
[email protected]
http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list