[En-Nut-Discussion] Nut/OS 5.0 and STM32 Support

[Uwe Bonnes]

>>>>> "Harald" == Harald Kipp <harald.kipp at egnite.de> writes:

    Harald> Hi developers, someone from STMicroelectronics emailed me in
    Harald> April after he learned at our booth in Nuremberg, that Nut/OS
    Harald> will support the STM32. I replied, that this is currently in
    Harald> beta and I expected something to become available within 1 to 2
    Harald> months. If I remember correctly, Ole started merging the
    Harald> Cortex-M3 branch at that time.

    Harald> After about 4 months I still haven't been able to check the
    Harald> STM32 parts, just did a few tests with the LPC17xx, which looked
    Harald> very good. I'm probably not the person, who can explain the
    Harald> status of the STM32 port. From what I've seen here in the list,
    Harald> it seems to work similar well.

    Harald> I'd appreciate, if someone, who is more familiar with STM32,
    Harald> would respond to him. 

to my knowledge, for the STM32 port, there is only one active developer that
is at the same time the only active users ;-(

The status is:
- UART, TWI, SPI, CAN and GPIO works (for me) on a broad range of F1/F2/F4/L1 variants.
- There is some F1 USB code that compiled not too long ago and sometimes booted
up, but also sometimes hanged on startup.
- There is a EMAC driver from Ulrich. It doesn't compile at the moment. I
have a eval board (PCC010V2) with the ST802RT1A phy chip, but the ST802RT1A
is alread NRND( not recommended for new designs) and I have no idea at the
moment what it takes to bring up ethernet with some new (or better old) phy
chip like the ST802. Or if perhaps it is easier to design/buy a testboard with
some other phy chip not in NRND state.
- flash and eeprom (L1) drivers, bootloader, etc are in unknown state.

    Harald> The background is, that he offered to
    Harald> officially publish the project, which will definitely attract ST
    Harald> customers and developers. Btw., he also asked, if we want
    Harald> anything else, like dev boards, samples etc. I told him, that
    Harald> Ulrich already got some and offered them to the community as
    Harald> well. But if there is any need, we may probably ask.

The discovery boards are nearly as cheap as dirt and where handed out on fairs
like Embedded world or Electronica. So from my side no need for simple
boards. Some board with a recent ethernet phy like the Olimex STM32-E407
could help, but I can also order at some distributor. But maybe these simple
boards could get other people to try out the STM32 port.

Otherwise I have tried to make ST notice about several documentation flaws,
but several approaches got by unnoticed/ unacknowledged. So if the ST
contact could help clean up these issues, it would be fine.

Early access the STM32F3 boards/documentation would be another possible area
of support.

    Harald> This will also bring up another topic: Releasing. Beginning of
    Harald> the year (or was it end of last year) I met Ole and Bernd here
    Harald> at egnite and Bernd was most helpful in explaining the Nut/OS
    Harald> track to IPv6 to us. Ole suggested, to include at least basic
    Harald> IPv6 support before releasing version 5. But not much had been
    Harald> done yet (no excuses, we had all been very busy). I first
    Harald> considered to create another minor version 4.12, to at least add
    Harald> a number of useful extensions, which are available for version 5
    Harald> only, excluding CM3.

No opinion on IPv6 here, as I didn't work with ethernet on a uC so long.

    Harald> As time goes by, what's your opinion? Should I move forward,
    Harald> releasing 5.0-rc1 as a first version with STM32/LPC/Cortex-M3
    Harald> support?

As often people restrain to use SVN, I vote for "release often, release
early"

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

Institut fuer Kernphysik  Schlossgartenstrasse 9  64289 Darmstadt
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