advice on a microcontroller board (and an interface)

[sknoogleplex]

I appreciate the warning. We'll see how it goes.

I'm not programming in machine code, for the record. Assembly. I was just saying that the fact that one can assemble things by hand provides some justification that you don't have to trust an assembler (at least if you're writing small amounts of code). I will be trusting one.

What do you think the hardest part is, interfacing with various pieces of hardware? Where would you start as far as programming some assembly (like flash an led) on the board from a linux devel machine? (link?) What software would you use?

[BeeBop]

I appreciate the warning. We'll see how it goes.

I'm not programming in machine code, for the record. Assembly. I was just saying that the fact that one can assemble things by hand provides some justification that you don't have to trust an assembler (at least if you're writing small amounts of code). I will be trusting one.

What do you think the hardest part is, interfacing with various pieces of hardware? Where would you start as far as programming some assembly (like flash an led) on the board from a linux devel machine? (link?) What software would you use?

The hardest part will be learning how to use the micro. Yes, I would do the embedded 'hello world,' which is flash an LED.

Well for starters, look up gnuARM software, then check this out. You should also make google your best friend for a while. This isn't much; I don't do ARM assembler.

ARM ASSEMBLER PROGRAMMING; tutorial, resources, and examples

ARMuC Wiki: HomePage

This one has some examples in assembly if you scroll down the page, also some links of interest:

http://www.neko.ne.jp/~freewing/cpu/arm_olimex/

and perhaps:

LPC210x ARM7 Microcontroller Tutorial


You might want to have a read of this page too:
Best Assembler for lpc chip. | LPC2000 | EmbeddedRelated.com

[futz]

Grab the top two books here. You have to register, but it's worth taking the time.

If you're going with LPC2148 then you must have the UM10139 LPC214x User Manual. It is absolutely necessary. There's diddly for info in the datasheets for LPCs. The User Manual is where all the necessary info is.

[DirtyLude]

You need to learn all the peripherals individually, so blinking led teaches you the basics of everything, plus the basics of the GPIO. Then move on to the interrupts, timers, UART, SPI hardware, learn each individual part of your big project, then bring it all together at the end.

Just because the UART peripheral is there on the uC doesn't mean your work is simple either. For a robust product IO will need to be interrupt driven and the data buffered. Otherwise you run the chance of losing data when just polling.

[futz]

For learning ARM assembler, the ARM Architecture Reference Manual looks like a pretty good reference.

[sknoogleplex]

I'll keep my nose to the grindstone. Thank you.