Responding to Per Westermark's
previous message:
Bingo! ;-)
Once I got this handy Eee PC with Linux, and once '51 is a hobby and not a job for living, I decided to try some of this '51 on Linux stuff. Note that eee is relatively small (memory and disk), slow, and has a small display (800x480, I have the cheap stuff, not to be too sad when I loose it somewhere - I bought it to carry around when waiting for bus, doctor etc.).
Let's just try to summarize, what do I need:
- a good programmers editor. Mammoths like eclipse are out of question, as well as prehistorical relics like joe/pico/nano and vi(m). At the moment setedit is up and running, but still looking for alternatives.
- an assembler. asem was supposed to work out of the box (I don't intend to mess with compiling etc.) but failed to install. Can be unpacked by hand, though; and as I don't believe it really needs to live outside a sigle directory, this might be the way to go. Need to test the metalink stuff under dosemu/freedos, as I don't really like asem.
- SDCC - to be downloaded and tested. I am The C-hater, so this is not a high priority one ;-)
- serial is a must, and I see no other way but go through USB. I tried the "USB-serial" cables I have - surprisingly, the Prolific-based worked straight off, the FTDI-based did not (loopback returns garbage characters). Maybe I will dig deeper for the FTDI later, as I have some potentially interesting FTDI-based devices around
- serial needs software - a terminal emulator. Unfortunately, *nux people have a strange and (somewhat outdated) notion of "terminal". minicom is one of those prehistoric-looking relics, but is the only real alternative. cutecom is cute (and purpotedly looks like my favorite Bray's) but completely brain-dead - you need to type in a string and press ENTER to send out that string; its developer straightly refused to make it usable (it is the very first request on the feature request list - to make it character-based rather than string-based - and his answer is that "this is the distinctive feature of cutecom"). Open to suggestions, although I doubt there are any.
- some real stuff - a hardware to play on. Next step is to try the P89V52RD2 in the 8052.com SBC. Pity that Ian Bell never finished his "downloader" for this one.
Will report regularly (if time permits).
JW
PS. To Frieder: yes, the OLPC laptop you showed us at the Conference (I don't believe it's already a year!) was THE inspiration... ;-)
