Evaristo Gutierrez wrote:
>
> Hi everyone!
>
> I'm quite a newbie around here and I was looking for a list of possible
> tools for programming in C an ARM7 microcontroller, preferably for free
> or at low cost, such as winarm, gnuarm, keil, yagarto?, freeRTOS?... any
> help that you could lend me would be great, if you know any other
> program, or if you think "x" program works the best please tell me...
>
> sorry in advance if this question has been asked before, but I haven't
> found it although it looks to me like it should be a common problem for
> everyone trying to start here...
>
> thanks!

Well it all depends on your own personal preferance.  Also, just because
you use a certain compiler doesn't mean you ahve to use the associated
programming tools.  I  myself use winARM to get the arm-elf-gcc
compiler, but I do all of my programming using Visual Studios 2005
(VS2005 express is available for download free).  I suggest you find a
compiler package that your comfortable with (the only one I have
experience with really is gcc/WinArm) and then find a front end thats
compatible with it (Eclipse, textpad, Visual Studios, notepad...).  Most
compilers  have makefiles or support the option for one, and as long as
your programming environment supports using external makefiles you can
do any combination that you like.

P.S. Sorry if this is incoherent, its been a long day :)

Thanks a lot for your answers Jim and Stefan, I'm starting to have a
clearer idea of what I need now...
but the thing is that in fact I've been asked to look for various tools,
or various ways of programming the micro, try them and compare them,
I've found several ones but I was asking in case someone knew some
others that I haven't found yet, or if anyone knew already that a
determined tool works fine (winarm looks very good for what I'm hearing)
or if on the contrary it isn't worth playing with it... mind that I
don't want anybody to do my job, but you know that the begginings are
difficult and I'm still a bit lost here, so thanks again!

Stefan wrote:
> I see your point. It might be useful to make a list what we (users here)
> actually use.
>

Good idea.

MCU: AT91SAM7A3 on Eval board and home made PCB
Jtag: SAM-ICE

OS: Windows XP SP2
IDE: Visual Studios 2005 (I have the full version, but there are free
downloads of smaller pieces, such as C only part)
Compiler: WinARM
Jtag-Programmer: SAM-Prog
Debugger: JLINKGDBServer + arm-elf-insight


Since you've been asked to find a variety of tools, I can only imagine
that this is work related.  When evaluating tools you'll have to
remember who your fellow programmers are.  There are atleast two
software engineers at my office that would be confused beyond belief if
I forced them to use Cygwin :)

Devis wrote:
>
> Hi,
> I have the same tools, but I have a question, what tool could I use with
> SAM-ICE  for programming the MCU?
>
> Thank you for attention.
> Devis

I use the SAM-PROG v2.3 program to program my MCU's.  This is an Atmel
program use for programing the AT91SAM7 boards.  I'm assuming that it
would work on other Arm 7's as long as it had the Jtag device properly
attached, but I don't actually know for sure.

You can get it at:
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/tools_card.asp?tool_id=3883  (its in
the AT91-ISP zip).  That also installs the SAM-BA thingie, but the
SAM7A3 doesn't really support it with out doing magical fun stuff to the
code that I never bothered figureing out how to do, so I'm not really
sure how it works.