Due to popular demand (and some new staff resources) we have re-started our email newsletter. If you are like me you probably receive five or six of these newsletters each day from various companies. It seems like everyone sees this as an effective way to keep in touch with their customers (and prospective customers). The key, of course, is whether the content is valuable enough to set aside time to read it.

We have pledged to make RTXC I/O as relevant and informative as possible. The real challenge is that the embedded industry is diverse and somewhat fragmented. What may be of interest to a medical device manufacturer may not have any appeal to ad developer working on mobile phone platform. As we pick topics for these issues we are trying to choose subjects with broad appeal. We welcome your feedback and suggestions for future issues. Send your comments and ideas to rtxc-io@quadros.com.

In this issue we revisit USB development and explain some of the design issues in using USB to allow a laptop or PC to read resident memory on an embedded system. In the news category we are pleased to announce support for IAR’s Embedded Workbench for ColdFire and an exciting new feature enhancement in the VisualRTXC design tool. And check out our listing of upcoming industry events including a new Houston-based training class in the RTXC Quadros RTOS.

Quadros Systems RTXC^TM RTOS Supports IAR Development Tools for ColdFire^® Processors

Now, developers looking to move to the ColdFire family of processors can access the flexibility and power of the RTXC Quadros RTOS and the efficiency and code density of the IAR Embedded Workbench development environment.

IAR Embedded Workbench is a set of highly sophisticated and easy-to-use development tools – C/C++ compiler, assembler, linker, librarian, text editor, project manager, and debugger – combined in an integrated development environment (IDE) for programming embedded applications. It generates very efficient and reliable FLASH/PROMable code for ColdFire devices.

Looking for the convenience and confidence of a single supplier for RTOS, stacks, middleware and tools? Quadros Systems sells and supports IAR development tools for both ColdFire and ARM platforms.

Read more...

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Connect your embedded system to a PC with USB
by Stephen Martin, Quadros Systems, Inc

A popular use for USB in an embedded system is to allow a PC to read log files or similar data stored on the resident flash memory in the embedded system. This is useful for allowing occasional access by technicians (since RS-232/DB9 connectors have disappeared from laptops) or it can be a routine way of transferring log data to a PC for analysis. Designing your embedded system to allow a PC to read resident flash memory requires the correct components and interface code so that they work seamlessly together. Read full article here. Back to Top

Visual RTXC Update

Some of you may be familiar with our new design tool, VisualRTXC, an easy-to-use, powerful design tool that allows you to rapidly move between high level design concepts and generated C code.

The latest release includes a new productivity enhancement: component reuse. With this feature you can group together any collection of VisualRTXC objects and save them as a component. Any portion or subsystem of your VisualRTXC project can be defined as a reusable component: as complex as a board support package to something as simple as an alarm block. All of the graphical and code semantics are saved as a unit and can be in your next project by simply importing the component.

Specify a component at the top level by simply clicking on the objects then selecting “export” on the toolbar menu.

Find out more about VisualRTXC.

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Ask The Expert

Have a question? We are here to help!
We would like to introduce our new section “Ask the Expert” to you. This is your online opportunity to ask questions of our engineers, developers and even our sales team.

We'll take the best questions and post them here in our newsletter, along with our expert's responses.

If you cannot view this form, click here.

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