Arch Linux

nasser

Member

Registered: 2016-01-23

Posts: 56

Using PICKit2 with SDCC and pk2cmd

Hello guys, I have used MPLAPX on Ubuntu with PicKit2 and it worked fine, now I have moved to Arch(I know I can run MPLAPx on Arch) and want to try SDCC and pk2cmd in order to the support the community but I haven't find any books or tutorials on how to use them, I'm not professional I only write small programs (LEDs and 7 seg) and I want to take embedded systems as my career and also keep every thing FOSS, any advice or resources to how to use SDCC and pk2cmd, thx in advance.

TheSaint

Member

From: my computer

Registered: 2007-08-19

Posts: 1,532

Re: Using PICKit2 with SDCC and pk2cmd

About SDCC you might find help on the limited documentation and the console online help. For the rest it should do as promised.

About writing to the devices, I think there's no much better than MPLABX IPE. I can't tell about pk2cmd.
Anyway I experimented to use this tool for Arduino. Which works by a simple tty program like picocom.

In case you're looking for a different program to write the micro-controllers, you may give this a try.

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do it good first, it will be faster than do it twice the saint

addk

Member

Registered: 2014-02-19

Posts: 6

Re: Using PICKit2 with SDCC and pk2cmd

Hi,

I have played around with PIC's and/or other brand mcu's and hardware. There are so many caveats (don't know if I use that word correctly) you can stumble into and you really, really have be on your toes in terms of when are you faced with a software problem and when are you faced with a hardware problem (e.g. wrong wiring). For that reason I would suggest you continued to use Microchip's software. Also, as far as I remember, only the most common PIC's (84F and some of the really small as I can remember) is supported by SDCC.

It is huge fun but was forced to get rid of everything because I don't have the time for it. I remember writing a program for a PIC in assembly that could measure temperature and showing the temperature on a screen. I had only 20-someting machine code lines back on the PIC when I was done! You learn so much about hardware and how hardware communicate.

I have also tried a Xilinx FPGA and again used Xilinx software (don't think there is an open source alternative, as Xilinx don't release their routing software, or what it is called, publicly).

So to sum up, you much better of sticking to MPLAB-X. I have tried it in both Linux and Windows. I can't remember which, but I used a knock-off pickit from ebay, and in one of the operating systems I had some trouble. Think it was something with I had to plug it in at just the right time, but can't remember