[Dprglist] Nuvoton microcontrollers

[Murray Altheim]

[I realise this is a bit of a niche journey, but thought to document what
I've learned in case it's helpful to others.]

For those who may be interested in 8051 development, as a followup to my
earlier message, the link to the list of Nuvoton development tools [1]
includes IDEs for all of its Cortex M0/M4/M23 and 8051 controller boards.
This does actually include a customised version of the Eclipse IDE called
NuEclipse, with distributions available for both Windows or Linux. It's
based on a rather old (2015) version of Eclipse "Mars" but seems functional.

I downloaded and installed NuEclipse for Linux, which seems to be Eclipse
customised for C/C++ development, comes with a GCC OpenOCD installer,
code support for the 60-odd boards Nuvoton sells, user manuals and some
sample files.

There are also three KEIL IDEs: one for US$395, one commercial, one
free [2] for the Cortex controllers, and two different IAR IDEs for the
M0/M4/M23 and 8051 processors, resp.  I downloaded the free version but
it unfortunately won't run on the only Windows machine I have, a hateful
little Microsoft Surface Go. So that path ended there.

As I'm mostly interested in the 8051 I went to the IAR site, searched for
the NuTiny-N76E885 board [3] (which is currently on 90% discount for
US$2.50), then downloaded the IAR EW8051 Embedded Workbench IDE [4],
available for either a free 30 day trial or a 4K code size-limited
installation. When you first open the IDE you have a choice of
registering online for the Evaluation Copy. It won't operate until
registered.

On starting the IAR IDE it looks a bit like an older, customised version
of Eclipse, but basically functional. It doesn't seem like there's any
way to connect it to the Pimoroni IO Expander [5] that uses the Nuvoton
MS51, so if I want to further investigate I'll have to consider getting
one of the Nuvoton controller boards.

I've also contacted their sales department to see about the price for
purchase of the IAR IDE for a quantity of one. The installer included a
"dongle driver" so I'm hoping they don't use dongle-based license management
(yuck). At least for the trial license there's no dongle. If the commercial
price of the KEIL IDE ($395) is any indication, the IAR one might be rather
expensive. I hope to get a quote from their sales rep, otherwise I'll be
limited to 4K code files.

Anyway, 'nuff for now.

Cheers,

Murray
[1] https://www.nuvoton.com/tool-and-software/software-development-tool/driver/
[2] https://www2.keil.com/nuvoton/M0-M23
[3] https://direct.nuvoton.com/en/nutiny-n76e885
[4] https://www.iar.com/iar-embedded-workbench/?architecture=8051
[5] https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/io-expander
...........................................................................
Murray Altheim <murray18 at altheim dot com>                       = =  ===
http://www.altheim.com/murray/                                     ===  ===
                                                                    = =  ===
     In the evening
     The rice leaves in the garden
     Rustle in the autumn wind
     That blows through my reed hut.
            -- Minamoto no Tsunenobu