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 STM32F7, An ARM Cortex-M7 
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Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2013 2:33 am
Posts: 165
STM32F7, An ARM Cortex-M7

"We’ve seen the ~F4 chip pump out 800×600 VGA, drive a thermal imaging camera, and put OpenCV inside a webcam. Now there’s a new, even more powerful part on the market, and the mind reels thinking what might be possible."

"Right now there a few STM32F7 parts out, both with speeds up to 216MHz, Flash between 512k and 1MB, and 320kB of RAM. Peripherals include Ethernet, USB OTG, SPDIF support, and I²S. The most advanced chip in the line includes a TFT LCD controller, and a crypto processor on-chip. All of the chips in the STM32F7 line are pin compatible with the STM32F4 line, with BGA and QFP packages available."

"As with the introduction of all of ST’s microcontrollers, they’re rolling out a new Discovery board with this launch. It features Ethernet, a bunch of audio peripherals, USB OTG, apparently an Arduino-style pin layout, and a 4.3 inch, 480×272 pixel LCD with capacitive touch. When this is available through the normal distributors, it will sell for around $50. The chips themselves are already available from some of the usual distributors, for $17 to $20 in quantity one. That’s a chunk of change for a microcontroller, but the possibilities for what this can do are really only limited by an engineer’s imagination."

http://hackaday.com/2015/06/26/new-part ... cortex-m7/

Users here could probably move up from the $9 computer to a 200 MHZ Arm computer but you should really think about making space and room for development for new tech on your website if you want the future to go forward for personal computers.


Mon Jun 29, 2015 2:12 pm

Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2013 6:54 pm
Posts: 1807
Mmm, dev board about £33 at Farnell, includes a touch screen on the back of the board. Could make a chunky calculator or tablet from that!

Dev board spec:
http://www.st.com/st-web-ui/static/acti ... 179227.pdf

Links to resellers:
http://www.st.com/web/en/catalog/tools/ ... /PF261641#


Mon Jun 29, 2015 2:49 pm

Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2013 2:33 am
Posts: 165
Ed,

One of the hard things to do is asking ARM programmers how to write a machine language monitor on ARM. Some of them haven't programmed retro computers like the 6502 so they don't know what a machine language monitor is.

In order to get one of these chips more "computer like", it has to accept code and be programmable because I don't like the method of always plugging them into another computer to program. I'm sure that a machine language monitor or assembler would have to come up to speed with the new technology but I don't like how the modern stuff is programmed.

Chuck


Tue Jun 30, 2015 1:45 pm

Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2013 6:54 pm
Posts: 1807
I wonder if anyone has written a machine language monitor for ARM - it's quite a purist request, as using an external system is always going to be less resource-constrained.

You might enjoy working up the bare metal programming examples at https://github.com/dwelch67/raspberrypi

Or, you can run RiscOS Pico on your Pi, you then have BBC Basic which includes an assembler.

There are some helpful books at http://www.riscos.org/resources/

Of course if you run a Linux on your Pi, the gcc compiler includes assembler and disassembler, and gdb the debugger will let you set breakpoints, single step, debug and so on.

Perhaps you can port a simple short monitor from 6502 to ARM - the instruction set of ARM will be familiar if you already know 6502.


Tue Jun 30, 2015 3:03 pm

Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2013 2:33 am
Posts: 165
Thank you, Ed.

I bought an older model Raspberry Pi but never used it and never really got the support of the community. All of the tutorials I found were written for people who already knew what they were doing. The acceptance isn't really widespread because I had to wait months to get one and there are limited places where you can get a Raspberry Pi and I really don't know anyone else that owns one.

I decided to invest in the $9 computer and I just completed a backer invite to buy more product from them.

I have the STM 32 F4 boards and books and I want to be a producer instead of just a consumer so this is it for me.

http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/STM ... HwodvegHwA


Thu Jul 02, 2015 4:41 pm

Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2013 6:54 pm
Posts: 1807
I suppose the crucial step, once you have something, is to take the first steps to actually use it! As it happens, I have a pi and also an STM board, and have done some very minor things with both of them. I also have some other boards which I've done rather less with. Sometimes too much choice is a bad thing.


Thu Jul 02, 2015 4:59 pm

Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2013 2:33 am
Posts: 165
For some people it is a lifestyle. I tutored adults in college and told them they have to practice it full time to get good at it.

Some of the C books out there are worse than my college professor in college and I bought more than one programming book to learn.

It is the same way with the game cube. They have these walkthrough books and I ended up buying three books to explain the puzzles in one game because the other two books leave out important stuff.

We had problems at work too. We get programs written by engineers and the programmer's make themselves more important by taking the information in the manuals out of procedural order and putting the commands in alphabetical order. And then we have some builds that are not specific to any manual so I had our company kick them out and some major companies that we're taking advantage of us were sorry.


Thu Jul 02, 2015 5:20 pm

Joined: Mon Aug 14, 2017 8:23 am
Posts: 157
Hi All,

When the STM32F746 firt came out in July 2015 - I was inspired to create a simple breakout board - and so BoB came to be.

Now the '746 is available as a 400MHz part - so all the more reason to get into some serious bare metal programming

http://suburbia86.rssing.com/browser.ph ... 85&item=74


Ken


Fri Aug 25, 2017 4:50 pm

Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2013 6:54 pm
Posts: 1807
Nice board!

Looking over this thread, I see we're talking about ARM, about bare metal, and about natively programming ARM, perhaps with a monitor. As well as talking about particular ARM chips.

So, two thoughts. One, naturally, is Forth! There's a bare metal Forth for the Pi here - perhaps not too hard to port to ARM?

The other thought: Bruce's one-page monitor for the 65Org16, which was ported to OPC6 by Dave aka Hoglet, and then extended, could probably be ported to ARM without too much difficulty. It is only one page! (The 65Org16 is a homebrew 16-bit version of 6502, and OPC6 is not entirely unlike a homebrew cut down 16 bit version of ARM, although it didn't set out to be.)


Fri Aug 25, 2017 5:21 pm
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