[avr-gcc-list] freeice project

[Armand ten Doesschate]

Joerg,
(if I may call you),

On Mon, Aug 25, 2003 at 12:00:09PM +1200, address@hidden wrote:
> 
> But that means it will be something completely different than the
> Atmel JTAG ICE.  And i'm basically losing if i'm using a computer that
> doesn't have a USB connector (which is my current AVR development/
> ICE/ISP platform, a Toshiba Libretto 70ct).  I can understand the
> reasoning for using the parallel port, but personally think an
> AVR-plug compatible serial protocol would be better (even if slower).
> 
> I don't have an idea about the portability of the Linux libusb API,
> e. g. to FreeBSD which is my OS of choice, or to Windows which
> probably a lot of people would like to use it on later.
> 
> So while freeice certainly looks great, i think there's also a niche
> market for an Atmel-compatible JTAG ICE clone as well.
> -- 
> J"org Wunsch                                         Unix support engineer
> address@hidden        http://www.interface-systems.de/~j/
> 
> ------------------------------
> 

The chip I use for usb is the all famous FT245BM. It is supported under M$
(free drivers available) and - surprise - also for FreeBSD (I am not that
familiar with it but version 4.7 should have support).
However you must apply a vendor and product id (I obtained them by courtesy
of FTDI). The vendor id is FTDIs and the product id is different from the
standard product id of the original device. This means it will live happily
next to the existing standard device.

The maintainer of the GNU/Linux USB stack advised me to use the libusb package
for now because maintaining a driver is rather difficult (it worked after some
patches but I encountered another completely different problem). When all goes
well then product id will be put into the kernel driver so you can access it
through standard system calls. The userland application will be modified as
such.

The freeice project (i.e. gdb_serialzer) can be extended with other 
communication
interfaces (ethernet, rs232) and / or other functionalities (programmer, support
more targets, etc) - the sky is the limit - so I believe it will make itself
definitely valuable.


Armand


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Armand ten Doesschate
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the Netherlands
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e-mail : address@hidden