SparkFun Forums

[kdoney]

I bought the USB Tiny and the Str711 both from here and can't get anyone to answer my question about how to get them to work together. Does this happen a lot? My first venture into ARM is certainly my last. I have been very satisfied with everything else I've ever bought here but I guess you have to look out for land mines everywhere now. How about the fact that even olimex won't support their own programmer.

[cfb]

I bought the USB Tiny and the Str711 both from here and can't get anyone to answer my question about how to get them to work together.

We haven't tried them ourselves but have seen much praise for Crossworks support. Try asking them. If you are using a freeware tool like Eclipse then you can only *expect* to get as much support as you pay for

[theatrus]

Using the FTDI ARM programmers can be a bit squirrely sometimes.

When you try launching openocd on the command line, what is it doing? What config file are you using?

As for Crossworks, you'd need to contact Rowley (which will likely tell you to pound sand and buy their JTAG pod ).

[leon_heller]

I don't think that many people here use the STR711, which probably explains why you can't get any help.

Leon

[Polux rsv]

kdoney, I understand your frustration. OpenOCD, JTAG and all this stuff is really a nightmare for non-software guys, like me, who are mainly electronics based, with (good) knowledge of coding.

On the other side, from what I know, this forum is not supposed to be a "customer support forum".

Angelo

[TheDirty]

Have you powered the target board?

Crossworks already has an OCD Tiny setup you should just be able to select.

[motopic]

I bought the USB Tiny and the Str711 both from here and can't get anyone to answer my question about how to get them to work together. Does this happen a lot? My first venture into ARM is certainly my last. I have been very satisfied with everything else I've ever bought here but I guess you have to look out for land mines everywhere now. How about the fact that even olimex won't support their own programmer.

Have you tried reading about OpenOCD?
Olimex makes Tiny to use with OpenOCD. Using OpenOCD you should be able to get it to work with "darn near any jtag" setup. OpenOCD is a big, moving target, and what you really need is someone who is using your board/chip because they will know the exacts. I use 2148 and STM32 so I can't help. Try browsing for Str711 stuff.

Maybe this will help you get started:
http://www.siwawi.arubi.uni-kl.de/avr_p ... index.html

Don't panic, be patient. I worked for 3 weeks(parttime) to get a gcc toolchain+linker scripts to work right for Stm32. hehehe.
But now I have a free, open toolkit.

[stevech]

Don't panic, be patient. I worked for 3 weeks(parttime) to get a gcc toolchain+linker scripts to work right for Stm32. hehehe.

But now I have a free, open toolkit.

"Free" if you value your time as $0.00.

[theatrus]

Free as in speech, not as in beer

[leon_heller]

Nor as in lunch.

Leon

[kdoney]

Thanks guys. I did get support from CrossWorks. They made sure I had set the ftd2232 to the right settings and divided the target pll but after that they said go to the manufacturer. They said their ocd tiny does not work with olimex's ocd tiny board. I was to use the generic ftd target.

I haven't used any command line attempts to connect to the target. I went through Eclipse and Crossworks.

I worked as a system engineer for 25 years writing every kind of software imaginable. My first computer was a pdp11-05 where I flip switches to create 1's and 0's but this ARM stuff is convoluted. It seems like a hazing to weed out undesirables from programming the secret chip.


My question is who cares. I'll just program the other 100 microcontrollers out there. I just hate wasting the $150. Anyone want a programmer and board which don't work together?

[TheDirty]

It's a complicated microcontroller for complicated tasks. If you wanted simple, yes, there are other microcontrollers. Not many with the power of an ARM core, though. I'm not certain why, if you are brand new to microcontrollers you would decide to try running before walking and with such an obscure ARM7 variant.

I also worked with PDP-11's but only for a short while before their end of life. No switches, we had some nice dumb terminals by that time.

[kdoney]

I'm sure you're right about the power of the ARM but just for kicks, give me an example of a project which would be difficult to impliment on any other controller. Oh, and I don't mean because the peripherals aren't readily available.

[TheDirty]

I'm sure you're right about the power of the ARM but just for kicks, give me an example of a project which would be difficult to impliment on any other controller. Oh, and I don't mean because the peripherals aren't readily available.

Anything with large processing requirements. Image processing, or graphical library processing UI, IP Stack, RF Mesh.... It's impossible to say specific instances as everything can be done on regular 8bits to a degree and there's a gray area of super optimization. I'm not certain why your discounting the peripherals either, since most ARM7 variants strengths are their wide peripheral ranges. You can also step up to ARM9 or sideways to ARM Cortex-M3 with the same development environment.

Really, if you didn't think an ARM7 was any more useful than say a standard 8bit, it makes your decision to start with one even more confusing.

If you decide to try ARM7 sometime again in the future, I would suggest trying out an LPC devel board. Keep the JTAG Tiny as long as there is nothing physically wrong with it, as it is it should work fine. The LPC yahoogroup mailing list is very active and you can get a lot of help from there with startup issues.

[motopic]

free as in free. So I put in about 30hrs trying to figure something out. You all saying you 'never' get a problem that bugs the heck out of you???

Now I know how it works. Far more valuable than paying $2000+ for a C compiler from a company ONLY to find that its the SAME GCC setup??? huh?
You work with what you have, I have spare time, I do not have a spare $2000+.