Coldfire

Hello all. I was evaluating the prospects of trying a project similar to the CMU Cam. It doesn't look like this is anywhere in the capability of a dsPIC since it has no external RAM so I was looking at Coldfire processors, except that their development tools cost SOOOO much. Like a JTAG module is like $4000 and the software is also just as bad!

I suppose I could go with an Arm, but for reasons unknown to me I want to go with a Coldfire. Any comments?

If you can keep the code under 128K, the Coldwarrior free edition would work for you.

Also, check out their ColdFire forum for a "build it yourself" BDM for programming and debugging.

Free and "open source" is a wonderful thing...

Bleh, the last time I tried messing around with open source was for the M68k and I gave up on that. Of course, I didn't know as much then as I do now so it might work. Unfortunately, I love using IDEs (who doesn't?), so the 128k limit is pretty restrictive since I'm using these Coldfires for things that dsPICs can't handle, and those have 512k of flash memory. The compiler is open source though right? So where does the memory restriction come from? Or is it for "their version" of the GNU compiler? I was looking at Sourcery G++ and their IDE is much more affordable than Metroworks' Code warrior ($400 vs $2500), and their version of the command line only compilers are free.

That said, Arm vs Coldfire? For use as general robotics controllers and image/frequency processing where more of a computer is needed than an "intelligent periphreal" PICs suffice.