From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Received: by 10.99.108.8 with SMTP id h8mr32904853pgc.50.1483363728618; Mon, 02 Jan 2017 05:28:48 -0800 (PST) X-Received: by 10.157.35.89 with SMTP id k25mr1888977otd.11.1483363728571; Mon, 02 Jan 2017 05:28:48 -0800 (PST) Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.glorb.com!75no5671100ite.0!news-out.google.com!g131ni11160itg.0!nntp.google.com!75no5671095ite.0!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2017 05:28:48 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=2607:fea8:3ce0:c9e:e0f8:6ddc:5ffd:c3de; posting-account=cUi90woAAADTaOISowbbHM8GUD0-opJO NNTP-Posting-Host: 2607:fea8:3ce0:c9e:e0f8:6ddc:5ffd:c3de References: <9ca07b79-db85-4d4a-b082-61cd75fcc1c8@googlegroups.com> User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: <20f3a379-e76d-4323-8f1a-a1bb77b93d7e@googlegroups.com> Subject: Re: Interfacing Ada With Full Runtime Directly to Electronic Chips From: patrick@spellingbeewinnars.org Injection-Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2017 13:28:48 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:32993 Date: 2017-01-02T05:28:48-08:00 List-Id: Hi Dmitry Thanks yet again for your help and expertise. Your suggestions are great and can help but let me give a little more backg= round. I have been servicing scientific instruments since 1999(or 1998 part time).= I can repair them just fine but I have done very little circuit design. I = have tinkered with the idea of building my own scientific instrument for ye= ars but I have always put it aside again due to the start up costs. I have = figured out ways to lower these costs and the idea is back on again. The circuits I work on feature tri-state logic and parallel digital buses. = I want to use a serial bus instead. I don't have much hands on experience w= ith SPI or IC2 but this is probably the way to go for communication with pe= ripheral devices in-circuit. I find myself in a strange place. I like Ada and I would like to use it for= embedded design. It has everything that someone might need for controlling= chips yet in the 53lsb of Ada books that I have printed or bought, I can't= find a single example of someone doing this. It seems to be used as embedded middleware most of the time. Jeol makes mas= s spectrometers and uses Ada as they were featured in an Adacore video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DNiO7OOmwlrc but I haven't worked with their instruments specifically and I am not sure = how they control their circuits and if it's just C controlling peripherals. Every single instrument I have worked with and this is well into the hundre= ds, is controlled by Windows(which could still be Ada) but I would like to = uses Posix and probably Linux. Every single instrument uses either a microcontroller or embedded processor= with a small amount of external RAM and Firmware, nothing close to a compu= ter with full OS at least not to my knowledge. I was thinking that a single board computer with GPIO that ran Linux could = still interface directly with a circuit through on-board GPIO pins. This wo= uld be a huge departure from the instruments I have worked on already and i= s a bit scary for a first design. However it would also provide valuable to= ols and might shorten the design period. What does your GPIO setup look like? Is it not PCI based? Could you tell me= more. EtherCat and ModBus look fine but would this mean that Ada would end up as = middleware with a C based microcontroller the likely product on the other e= nd. I am hoping to stick to a solution without this. Thanks for your input on quality issues too, this is priceless as this info= rmation is actually quite hard to find. Happy new year to you too! -Patrick