Friday, October 02, 2009

Simulating MSP430 I/O on PC uForth (Solution?)

One horrible solution (but may work for me) is to simulate the MSP430 I/O under PC uForth.

Keep in mind: uForth is about scripting, not about writing system level Forth stuff on an MCU. It is meant for slinging around C functions and libraries. I don't intend on doing much bit banging in uForth. There will be no UART driver, no interrupt handler, no deep notion of MSP430 power modes. SwiftX Forth (and others?) is the best fit for that.

I want to take existing C app (maybe already running on an MSP430) and manipulate it.

However, some times I may want to toggle some ports. I can do this with a minimal RAM_DICT uForth on the MCU. That may be adequate. This would allow me to hack the MSP430. Maybe I should create a special "hackers" dictionary for the MCU that allows me to bit bang ports and interact with peripherals. (This *should* be a writable dictionary.. try blinking an LED without some sort of DO .. LOOP construct -- this requires compilation!)

If I really do need the ability to do bit banging in the full "scripted application", I should be able to simulate it on the PC uForth. This wouldn't be a full MSP430 simulation, but maybe just enough so that I can compile the word, test it (maybe textual output: "LED bit0/port1 is ON!") and then dump/flash the dictionary.

Just a thought... but, uh it sounds oh so "batchy".

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