Hi All
The M5223X Coldfire from Freescale appeared around the end of Q1 2006 and Freescale promoted it with a series of low cost seminars where the visitors also received a M52233DEMO board with integrated P&E BDM which works together with the Codewarrior 6.3 128k limited special edition, which was also supplied. This device has since then established itself as a clear favorite for industrial uTasker based projects. I think that the Freescale strategy works well and of course the Coldfire is a very mature processor with wonderful (68k based) architecture.
The device's peripherals are rich in features and powerful - some with DMA support. The uTasker project now supports most of these, from the UARTs in DMA mode through to CAN and, of course, the internal Ethernet with PHY.
The more you use the Coldfire part the more you appreciate its capabilities and I must admit that I do enjoy working with the M5223X more than some other devices. This may just be sentimental as I learned most of my processor stuff working with the Motorola 68302 (and DSP 56156) but it may also be that the chips are really that good.
But nowadays it is not just about ease of use but also about product development and production costs (although it probably always was...). High volume products can affort higher development costs even if the cheaper chips are more difficult to get working in the first place - [here one tends to think of ARM based ones...(?)]. In any case, the uTasker aims at keeping the effort involved in getting a project off the ground as low as possible, whether using the M5223X or another supported type. Check out the other processor specific forum sections for more details.
This section is dedicated to the Coldfire - presently the Ethernet M5223X types but soon also the M5222X USB ones too. So it is hoped that this will serve as a discussion platform as well as a useful information source for these chips.
I look forward to to reading your topics here soon!
Regards
Mark
P.S. Note that the uTasker package for the M5223X is now supplied with a GNU make file. This works also in the Eclipse environment and even the P&E BDM is supported, enabling a complete quality development chain based on open source solutions. Some users already use this and I have a simple quide to how to set up the project for use with Eclipse which I am sure will get posted here quite shortly - it will almost certainly be added to the tutorial in the next service pack.
