Hi µTasker users!

It has been a little quiet from my side as of late but this has been due to the holiday season - a week without Internet access was just about bearable...

And I have missed a deadline... the CAN support for the ColdFire has taken rather longer than expected and, combined with some time off, is only just ready for Beta testing. But things are looking up and I think that the solution has come together quite nicely. For ColdFire users with an interest in CAN (or anyone wanting to see what it is all about) I have added a draft of the CAN users document at the following address.

http://www.mjbc.ch/documents/uTasker/uTaskerCAN.PDF

I must admit to being rather new to the world of CAN so I had to do quite a lot of experimenting and testing and reading up before getting to the (possibly) final solution. Feedback is very welcome and Beta testers are invited!! The corresponding support for the SAM7X is then next on the cards...

Many thanks to S.Y. of Sunnyvale, California for pushing me to get the SPI EEPROM file system support officially into the µTasker package. We do have a little work to round things off but it is almost there and it is a very valuable feature when the application needs to occupy as much FLASH as available (especially the NE64...). I did not know that there was a M95512 for 64k but am happy to learn this since it offers a very simple and inexpensive way to offload the file system to a small SO8 chip connected over the SPI interface. The NE64 with 64k program and 64k file system is quite a beast in its class!! I have just warmed up the soldering iron and will tell you when we have cracked it for the NE64 then the ColdFire and SAM7X (a little more memory never hurts...) with a tutorial for anyone wishing to try it themselves.

Regards to L.H. of Machala. El Oro who has been doing wonders with the NE64. Thanks for sharing your project and it was fun doing parallel debugging with the Simulator and a Skype connection - the 8700km distance between us did not stop us getting that bug within about 10 minutes!!

Finally. There are a number of new users of the NE64 (still the favourite processor as far as new uses are concerned...) who are wondering about how they will program their own boards once they have finished with the DEMO9S12NE64 and its pre-programmed serial monitor. This has urged me to put the BDM on the priority list. So expect a project tutorial showing how to convert your DEMO board into an Ethernet enabled BDM - in fact it is quite easy really and involves just three wires and a connector. I have in fact been using it for over a year but it will need a good clean up before the code can see the light of day. But now I have promised it and so expect it soon...

Many thanks for using the µTasker. If you have any questions or would like some help solving any problems using it just mail me. Suggestions are also welcome.

Best of luck and regards

Mark

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