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Re: New to arm programming



On Thu 29 Aug, Michael D. Crawford wrote:
> I think it would also be helpful to me if I got some kind of arm-based
> desktop  machine that I could run Linux on.  This wouldn't be so much to
> develop software  for this chip, as to have a convenient platform to
> study things like arm  assembly code and kernel programming in a way that
> would be easier to do than  working on an embedded chip.  Can you
> recommend a machine to buy and tell me  where I could find it?

You can use an Acorn RiscPC - they are still available new from Castle
Technolgy, but that comes with Native RISCOS and you'll need to install
Debian-arm yourself. You might be better off getting a s/h one, or indeed
one via us (we'll pre-install ARMLinux for you).

The main disadvantage with these machines is that they aren't particulalrly
fast so compiling big packages can take ages. A netwinder is quite a lot
faster due to faster memory and HD interfaces, but you can expand and
upgrade these things. On the other hand you may be largely using
pre-compiled Debian resources in which case it doesn't matter much.

> Finally, can you recommend some books and websites I can read to learn
> about arm  assembly code and the processor architecture?

There is a lot of good documentation on line scattered about. I used to
maintain a lit of useful links but it's so out of date I hesitate to even
post the URL. It's probably still useful to you from a standaing start:
http://www.aleph1.co.uk/armlinux/resources.html

I've also written a book aimed at new ARMLinux developers which you might
find useful - it's on our website: 
http://www.aleph1.co.uk/armlinux/thebook.html

> Maybe later I can help work on linux for arm, but I can't promise
> anything at  the moment because I've been too busy for some time to
> contribute to free  software as much as I would like to.  But this new
> consulting work is very  promising for me, so maybe before too long I
> will be able to afford to take some  time off and write Free code.

Welcome - any fettlage you can do will be appreciated here.

Wookey
-- 
Aleph One Ltd, Bottisham, CAMBRIDGE, CB5 9BA, UK  Tel +44 (0) 1223 811679
work: http://www.aleph1.co.uk/     play: http://www.chaos.org.uk/~wookey/



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