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ARE YOUR CYGNALS CROSSED?

Taking a Look at Cygnal's C8051F000
by Fred Eady

Start ý Searching for a Cygnal ý Whatýs in There, Anyway? ý Off to See the Wizard ý Thereýs No Place Like Home ý Mixed Cygnals ý Birds of a Featherý ý Tuning In ý Sources and PDF

WHATýS IN THERE, ANYWAY?

I was curious as to what was inside the JTAG emulation cartridge. I guess my big question was whether or not they used a Cygnal IC in the JTAG box. Well, Photo 2 tells all, and thatýs not much. I must assume that the JTAG micro is the IC with its manufacturer markings removed. Iým going to leave you with the photo to make your own assumptions.

Photo 2ýI fiddled with the JTAG box and finally got the cover off. I shouldnýt have wasted my time. A fine job of sanding was performed on the main processor IC.

The CD-ROM contains the Cygnal IDE, application notes, datasheets, product briefs, an 8051 Metalink DOS assembler and PDF userýs manual, and some example code in C and assembler. I installed V.1.1 of the Cygnal IDE. It was pretty neat but nothing to write home about as it looked like hundreds of other IDEs weýve all seen before. One thing did catch my eye, though. The Cygnal IDE contains a function called the Configuration Wizard. At a glance, the Configuration Wizard seemed to automatically fill in the code needed to configure the C8051F000 crossbar. I stashed this away in my mind as something I wanted to explore further when I got this SDK on its feet. The only problem I could see with the Configuration Wizard was that it generated only assembler. Iým planning on using C, and I already know I can just insert the Configuration Wizard assembler inline with my C code. So, the assembler-only restriction of the Configuration Wizard is just a minor inconvenience.

Knowing that my SDK was most likely way behind the version curve, I decided to visit Cygnalýs web site to get the latest version of their IDE. I was thinking that maybe it would be a bit flashier and contain some useful bells, whistles, and fixes. Flashier was an understatement. My out-of-the-box Cygnal SDK software was V.1.1, and the latest IDE available on the web site was V.1.6. In V.1.6, a professional version of Keil Softwareýs A51 macro assembler and linker replace the DOS version of the Metalink 8051 assembler, and an evaluation version of Keilýs C51 C compiler was added to the Cygnal IDE mix, as well.

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