[En-Nut-Discussion] Any Work-in-progress or else for the XMEGA

[Uwe Bonnes]

>>>>> "Ulrich" == Ulrich Prinz <uprinz2 at netscape.net> writes:

    Ulrich> Hi Uwe, to be honest...

    Ulrich> When Atmel started to introduce these chips round about two or
    Ulrich> three years ago, I was very interested and even took a seminar
    Ulrich> on them. But as time faded and none of the chips where
    Ulrich> released...

    Ulrich> Now I prefer STM32F series from STM as they give 32 Bit Power by
    Ulrich> exactly the same cost or even less compared to the AVRs. ATxmega
    Ulrich> could have been a great thing but it needed much to long time to
    Ulrich> appear.

Well,

for some isolated project I tried the XMEGA. But now I regret, as there are
many other loose ends:

- Atmel doesn't state if the  AVR Dragon can work with an
XMega256A3B. Studio 4 has some remark that only A4 type work, with no ETA
time estimation when/if this is will be fixed.

- AVR Dragon programmer Studio 5 seems to be a fork from an early V4 version
and the changelog doesn't state PDI support. The programmer device list also
doesn't list X256A3N.

- After I probably set some wrong JTAG fuse, there is no more PDI access
possible. I "tested" on two devices (argh). I tested with AVR1612 adapted
to some other board. The setup works with the "new" chip.

- IO Pins are not 5 -Volt tolerant. IO protection is not documented, I find no
statement if there are clamp diodes.

The only advantage of the XMEGA I still see is that XMEGA in QFP64 has 0.8
mm pitch versus 0.5 mm for the STM32 series. 0.8 mm pitch is a lot more
friendly to prototyping. Let's see what problems arise when I try the STM...

Thanks

-- 
Uwe Bonnes                bon at elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

Institut fuer Kernphysik  Schlossgartenstrasse 9  64289 Darmstadt
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