ARM Cross Development with Eclipse
By: James P. Lynch
1 Introduction
I credit my interest in science and electronics to science fiction movies in the
fifties. Robbie the Robot in the movie “Forbidden Planet” especially enthralled
me and I watched every episode of Rocky Jones, Space Ranger on television.
In high school, I built a robot and even received a ham radio operator license at
age 13.
Electronic kits were popular then and I built many Heath kits and Knight kits,
everything from ham radio gear to televisions, personal computers and robots.
These kits not only saved money at the time, but the extensive instruction
manuals taught the basics of electronics.
Unfortunately, surface mount technology and pick-and-place machines
obliterated any cost advantage to “building it yourself” and Heath and Allied
Radio all dropped out of the kit business.
What of our children today? They have home computers to play with, don’t
they? Do you learn anything by playing a Star Wars game or downloading
music? I think not, while these pastimes may be fun they are certainly not
intellectually creative.
A couple years ago, there were 5 billion microcomputer chips manufactured
planet-wide. Only 300 million of these went into desktop computers. The rest
went into toasters, cars, fighter jets and Roomba vacuum cleaners. This is
where the real action is in the field of computer science and engineering.
Can today’s young student or home hobbyist tired of watching Reality
Television dabble in microcomputer electronics? The answer is an unequivocal
YES!
Most people start out with projects involving the Microchip PIC series of
microcontrollers. You may have seen these in Nuts and Volts magazine or
visited the plethora of web sites devoted to PIC computing. PIC microcomputer
chips are very cheap (a couple of dollars) and you can get an IDE (Integrated
Development Environment), compilers and emulators from Microchip and
others for a very reasonable price.
