I am looking into the MSP430 series of microcontrollers for a project.

I have surveyed the tools and I found the following companies make C
compilers for it:

1. Quadravox
2. IAR
3. Rowley & Associates
4. HiTech
5. ICC430
6. MSPGCC (free)

Hardware/JTAG debugging toolwise I see:

1. Softbaugh (USBP(E), USBPPRO)
2. Elprotronic (http://www.elprotronic.com/Products.asp)

What did you think of the compiler? The hardware JTAG debugging
interfaces? Cost for the tools? (I need just one seat). IAR seems to
expensive and overhyped.

I tried out AVR-GCC one time but found the lack of useful pragmas/macros
for microcontrollerish things to be frustrating. I have used the HiTech
C compiler for PIC and also the CCS PIC compiler. Both were good, CCS
had a lot of nifty features (#use rs232, #fuse, etc).

John.

"John" <localhost@localhost.com.com> wrote in message
news:mPHid.34938$hN1.13771@twister.socal.rr.com...
I like the Rowley tools. They work very well with the Olimex FET (only $9),
and support is excellent.

You ought to join the MSP430 Yahoo group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/msp430/

Leon

Leon

"John" <localhost@localhost.com.com> wrote:

You missed Imagecraft (www.imagecraft.com).

I tried doing some benchmarks with a couple of them and found
the IDEs to be awkward at best. I don't remember for certain
which ones they were, so I won't name names.

In article <mPHid.34938$hN1.13771@twister.socal.rr.com>,
localhost@localhost.com.com says...
I've been using ICC430 since it came out in Beta a few years back.
It's worked out well for me. There are still a few times when
I spot some extraneous register loads in the assembly code, but there's
nothing that has been too objectionable.

I use the included NOIce debugger and either the MSP430 FET JTAG
dongle or a homemade jtag dongle for programming and debugging.

Mark Borgerson

John schrieb:
I am using MSPGCC with KDevelop as a frontend for sourcecodedebugging.
Works great. It took me some time though to figure out how to set things up.
If you want to have a quick start you are better of with Quadravox or Rowley.

Markus

John wrote:
When I started MSP430 IAR/ICC430 was the only choice. It's very good.
Little niggles (like low power mode from C) are really only due to me
not having paid for support. The version I use remains very applicable
and produces compact code. Integration with Texas's FET modules are
fine, and all I need. They provide rapid JTAG programming with a
breakpoint or two. Look them up. If you want to do anything more serious
like tracing you'll need something more expensive.

However, I seriously hope you can find a better value for money toolset.
The Texas rep suggested I look at Rowley (make of that what you will);
he didn't seem to know about mspgcc. I have used Hitech PIC compilers
and they're the best, worth a look for any target.

Best Regards,
Mike.
--
Mike Page BEng(Hons) MIEE www.eclectic-web.co.uk
"Ask a Liberal Democrat, while he still knows everything"

On Sat, 06 Nov 2004 00:47:42 +0000, Mike Page
<mike@SCRUBeclectic-CAPSweb.BLAMEco.SWENuk> wrote:

IAR != ICC.

A limited version of the IAR MSP430 compiler comes with (or came with --
haven't gotten any, lately) the TI dev kits. http://www.iar.com/

ICC430 is a completely different compiler.
http://www.imagecraft.com/software/

--
Rich Webb Norfolk, VA

Rich Webb wrote:

IAR calls their command line tools. Usually it's not so bad since their
product name is official EW. We are bumping our version #, and I think
the official name will become ICCV7 for ???, e.g. ICCV7 for MSP430. This
hopefully will make it a little less confusing.

--
// richard
http://www.imagecraft.com