RISORSE

05 Tutorials

allankliu — Sun, 11 May 2008 01:53:43 +0200

Here I list some important resources for hardware training. Even the projects are avaialble in the Internet. The programmers should have hardware know-how as foundation of programming. For example, some basic electronics concepts like port configuration, grounding, the common sense is very important in programming. For example, I knew a software expert who could not setup a serial communication until someone told him that he forgot to connect ground in the serial cable. Before he knew that cause, he was stuck on the problem for two weeks.

The electroncis engineering is very interesting. Anyway, please learn some basic knowledge. The resources listed here are very helpful to understand the hardware.

Electronics Tutorials

http://www.electronics-tutorials.com/
Offering free comprehensive basic electronics tutorials in amplifiers, antennas, ham radio, filters, oscillators, power supply, receivers, test equipment and etc.

http://www.williamson-labs.com/
A collection of tutorials on Electronics, from the basics to University level; more than 190 URLs, in over 90 related subject areas.

04 Projects

allankliu — Sun, 11 May 2008 01:51:56 +0200

Because hardware programming is a combination of languages and operation systems. It is hard to organize the projects in a linear layout. The projects will be roll out according to the programming languages.

Assembly/C/C++

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/system/ppsc.aspx
Hardware Interface Programming in VC++, Calling a DLL from VC++ and VB

Delphi

USB Programming in Delphi with Virtual COM
http://www.delphi-jedi.org/
Project JEDI Portal, allows Delphi access USB port.

BASIC/Visual BASIC

http://www.jspayne.com/io/easyins2.html
I/O ActiveX/Visual Basic

http://mc-computing.com/languages/SerialIO.htm
Serial IO programming with VB/MS Access/Delphi/C++ Builder/Windows API

http://www.htservices.com/Tools/VBandC/SerialCommunications.htm
VB, C# serial programming

http://www.developerfusion.co.uk/show/1973/
Calling a C++ DLL from Visual Basic

Java

http://java.sun.com/products/javacomm/

03 Languages

allankliu — Tue, 06 May 2008 04:10:01 +0200

The programmers have their own preferences on programming languages. Me too, personally I enjoy C, Perl and PHP because of my working experience in electronics engineering and web programming. Here I will summary the language capabilities for hardware programming. Different programming languages are designed for specific purposes. Only the process languages are suitable for hardware programming. Do not get me in wrong way. OOP are also used for hardware programming as well. C++, Java and Python are good samples for OOP programming, for hardware as well. But some special purpose programming languages are not suitable for hardware programming, for example, markup language like HTML or XML. They are only for data exchange and web programming.

Google directory offers huge resources for programming languges for different purposes.

02 Operation Systems

allankliu — Tue, 06 May 2008 04:08:14 +0200

DOS/Windows 9x

Windows NT/XP

Linux

01 Interfaces

allankliu — Tue, 06 May 2008 04:06:23 +0200

In order to develop software for the devices connected to the PC, we should have enough knowledge of computer. The hardware platforms of different ages might vary in interfaces. In a Pentium class x86 PC, the regular interfaces are following: IDE, PCI, AGP, ISA, PCMCIA/PC Card Express, RS232, Parallel port, VGA (maybe you do not think it can be an interface, but you are wrong about it.) and DVI/HDMI, Ethernet, IEEE1394, IrDA, Bluetooth, WiFi and USB. Among these interfaces, some of the interfaces were mature and phased out, i.e. ISA/EISA. Some of them are fading out, such as parallel port, RS232 and PCMCIA, new notebooks have only USB port and PC Card Express. Some of the interfaces are quite unique, for example, VGA/DVI/HDMI has an I2C bus inside, which is used as DDC/EDID(Display Data Channel /Extended Display Identification Data Standard) for reading video formats supported by the display. But that feature can be used for a general purpose I2C interface. But nobody is using that feature until I made a DDC/EDID EEPROM programmer for a HDTV project.

EE Software Development

allankliu — Tue, 06 May 2008 04:05:05 +0200

Please do not get confused by the title. This resource book is not talking about EDA software for Electronics Engineering. We collected these open project resources for those programmers who are only familiar with PC computer, instead of embedded systems. Some of the programmers are experts on the x86 computers, but they do not know how to light a LED at all. Because they have not experience in development for the embedded systems. After all, this resource book is trying to demonstrate those projects which are using traditional high level programming languages on standard PCs and desktop operation systems to manipulate some hardware devices. We hope the software experts can easily migrate their experience on embedded system involved in a real working project.

09 Debug Tools

allankliu — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 04:42:46 +0200

GDB

Trace

System Profile

Hardware

08 Network Services

allankliu — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 12:07:40 +0200

Internet Super Server

SNMP

Telenet

SSH

HTTP

DHCP

07 Bootloader

allankliu — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 02:46:43 +0200

bootloaders

network booting

Disk/CF LILO

DiskOnChip GRUB

U-Boot

06 Mount RFS

allankliu — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 02:36:39 +0200

Overview
When the RFS content and storage media are ready, the developer can setup and mount RFS. First of all, we must select the file system for RFS, then convert the content to the required file system, or install the RFS on the devices.

File Systems
It is a comprehensive procedure to select the file systems, which is a balance of media properties, performance, system configuration. The developer should consider following issues when he design the file system. Of course, the developer can use two file systems as combination for embedded system.
Is the file system writeable?
Is the file system using pemernent storage?
Should the system recovery from power off?
Does the file system support compressed?
Does the file loaded to RAM first?

Besides those, the developer has better to read the manual of selected file systems to find out its limitation.

NFS/RFS