Society of Robots - Robot Forum

Electronics => Electronics => Topic started by: Aethur on August 02, 2011, 08:30:25 PM

Title: M68DEMO908GB60E
Post by: Aethur on August 02, 2011, 08:30:25 PM

Picked up this board from someone, don't know anything about it.  Anyone know where I might find some useful material for getting started with this thing?
Thanks in advance!  ???

http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Cat=2621773&k=m68demo908gb60 (http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Cat=2621773&k=m68demo908gb60)

Title: Re: M68DEMO908GB60E
Post by: Admin on August 02, 2011, 08:47:19 PM

Using a microcontroller that no one is familiar with is asking for serious pain - ie no one can help you when you get stuck, and no one can give you example software to save you time.

That's my 2 cents :P

Title: Re: M68DEMO908GB60E
Post by: Aethur on August 03, 2011, 06:46:51 AM

So it would seem :) but it free so I figured I would practice with this thing before I got the parts for my 50$ robot build, thanks for the response!

Title: Re: M68DEMO908GB60E
Post by: lrmall01 on August 03, 2011, 06:36:41 PM

Of course a lot of this depends upon your skill level but at the end of the day you are writing C code.  There will be slight differences in the way that you configure the I/O, the compiler, etc.  You won't be able to take the authors $50 robot code, compile, and run it on this dev kit without some changes.  However, this kit would be great for you to play around with.  By all means, keep it around because if you stick with it, at some point this stuff will make enough sense to you that you can use it for a future project.

All that being said, here are some links that you can look at.
Microcontroller Info http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=S08GB&nodeId=01624684491437 (http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=S08GB&nodeId=01624684491437)

Dev Kit Info http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=M68DEMO908GB60 (http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=M68DEMO908GB60)

IDE / Compiler http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=CW-MICROCONTROLLERS (http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=CW-MICROCONTROLLERS)

This board has a programmer integrated into it so you have everything you need to get started.  You can download the schematics and example source code at the second link above but I'm sure all of that is on the CDs that came with it.

Title: Re: M68DEMO908GB60E
Post by: Soeren on August 03, 2011, 08:50:10 PM

Hi,

Quote from: Aethur on August 02, 2011, 08:30:25 PM

Picked up this board from someone, don't know anything about it.  Anyone know where I might find some useful material for getting started with this thing?

Although you can probably get it running with the example software and while it is a decent kit, I'd recommend putting it on eBay or similar and get a board which has a larger support base, like an Arduino (or one of its various clones) or a PIC based board. Freescale do make nice processors, but they aren't wery much used among amateurs, so you're going to be doing most on your own.

And while you may use C, each processor core has lots of differences, so the code won't port as easy as some seems to think - it's not comparable to PC's running different OS.