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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

OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD

Thus far, everything I had taken from the SDK box with a Cygnal logo on it ran just fine under Win2K Professional. The blurb on the V.1.6 upgrade web page stated that Win2K support had been added to the V.1.6 release. Thatýs nice. What I had really hoped for was a new Configuration Wizard. Mick has a line, "You canýt always get what you want, but if you try sometimeýYou get what you need." Thank you for those sage words, Mick. As you can see in Photo 3, V.1.6 added a new Configuration Wizard button for C. Notice that the Open a File Template selection in the upper window is simply a crossbar configuration, although the lower window substitutes Register for Crossbar in the selection window. Because the crossbar is an important part of the C8051F000ýs architecture, letýs stop here and investigate both versions of the Configuration Wizard.

Photo 3ýThe upper window is V.1.1, and the lower window is V.1.5 of the Cygnal Configuration Wizard. The older version allows manipulation only of the crossbar and the I/O ports. The new version encompasses the crossbar and all of the modules and registers associated with it.

In the rightmost screen of Photo 4, you can see that I expanded the V.1.1 three-step crossbar configuration process and arbitrarily enabled nearly everything. As I enabled C8051F000 modules in the green area on the left of this frame, bits were twiddled and comments were added in the code window on the right. What you donýt see at the bottom of the far right frame of Photo 4 is step threeýs bit-set-bit-clear code, which enables either the push-pull or pull-up modes of the selected I/O pins.

I highlighted the Configuration Wizard V.1.1 functional areas inside V.1.5 of the Configuration Wizard in the leftmost window of Photo 4. As you can see, the new Configuration Wizard gives the coder the capability to configure the crossbar and generate set-up code for all of the modules attached to the crossbar. Although the idea behind the crossbar is simple (connect every module to any I/O pin), there are many variables that need to be considered when configuring it. Having a tool like the Configuration Wizard available makes the decision to use a Cygnal part much easier to make.

Everything seemed to be falling into place until I read a little further into the new features description of the IDE V.1.6. The documentation implies that the V.1.6 upgrade is possible only if you already have the IDE V.1.4. After talking to someone at Cygnal, I learned that the only way to get from V.1.1 to V.1.4 was to request and wait for a new CD. Hey, I donýt have all these high-speed Internet goodies for nothing. So, I left a message with technical support and asked if there was a better way than Mr. Postman to get to V.1.6 of the IDE. The answer was no.

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