[Coco] My New ATXMEGA128A3U Study Board Arrived

[jdaggett at gate.net]

Kip

Not a bad price. 

If you are not familiar with Atmel RISC assembly and are familiar with 6809 assembly then 
you will find a few quirks with the ATMEL part. 

Assembly for the ATmel RISC processors is not difficult to learn with some assembly 
background. It is that coming from the 6809 which is a CISC processor to the AVRs, a RISC 
Processor, there is some getting used to. With the AVR you now have 32 8 bit registers. All 
can be used for just about what ever you want. The first 16 registers are handled a little 
different than the last 16 registers. R26 through R31 can be used for 3 16 bit pointer 
registers. 

I strongly recommend that you also study the instruction set guide. It is available via the help 
menu or via a PDF download or with the software CD. You may need a ISP progrmamer like 
the AVRMKII. This is in case the bootloader, if the board has one, is accidentally erased. 

The instruction set is kind of similar to the HC11 but not. There are instructions that act only 
on the upper 16 registers and not the lower 16 registers. I guess the saving grace is the MOV 
and MOVW instructions. This allows register to register copying. I say copy because unlike 
the instruction would indicate, it does not move a register. It copies from source to destination 
register. 

Once you learn the little quirks of the AVR, it is not a bad microcontroller. I use them for my 
Christmas Lighting. I use the ATMega328 version. AVR studio is straight forward use IDE 
and with the AVR MKII ISP programer it is easy to get code loaded and running. 

Enjoy the world of AVR. There is a ton, and I mean a ton of code snippets for the AVR out 
there from robotics to dedicated projects. I am using mine for DMX512 lighting control. 

james


On 21 Feb 2013 at 6:50, Kip Koon wrote:

> Hi All,
> 
> I just received a new "ATXMEGA128A3U Study Board Version 1" as it is called.

> For $19 + shipping, I thought it was worth it, so much so that I bought 2 of
> the Version 1s to see what I could accomplish in the area of communications
> with each other and my 6809 computer plus also storage.
> 
> I didn't get Version 2 as it was $50.  I have never done any Atmel
> development before, but a close friend of mine has developed several items
> for various companies with earlier atmel microcontrollers and he's been
> trying to get me to learn the atmel microcontroller as well.  What are your
> thoughts?
> 
> Kip
> 
>  
> 
> 
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