Re: Increased Interest In Ada?

["Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com>]

I think that misses the point. The point was to create an environment in
which students could learn techniques for programming embedded computers. If
you give them a PC as the target, it pretty much defeats the whole game
since it looks just about like any other kind of programming. Especially if
you give them a PC with some version of MS-DOS or Windoze on it since that
just about eliminates the need for them to develop their own OS code.

Sure, hooking PCs to stuff and writing software for it can be a good
realtime experience, but I was looking at the notion of providing an
environment that reflects a whole different kind of problem space.

Just for grins, I plugged some words into Google and turned up:
http://www.zworld.com/index.html - you might pay them a visit and look at
the cost of their boards/development products. They're advertising their
"RabbitCore 2000" development kit for $169. (I'm sure you can plus it up
with plenty of options, but that's not a bad starting point, is it?) If
there was a little SBC like this with an Ada compiler, I think it might make
a good basis for an embedded programming class....

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/



"Tarjei T. Jensen" <tarjei.jensen@kvaerner.com> wrote in message
news:98kjgv$3j69@news.kvaerner.com...
> Doing this should be a two stage approach. Stage 1 is using off the shelf
> hardware like a standard PC. Stage 2 would involve working on an embedded
> kit. That way the money last. I don't think embedded intel kits are
> particularly cheap. And if you want a kit for everybody then it isn't
cheap
> anymore.
>
> As for what you can connect to a PC; only your imagination limits you. The
> last two issues of Elektor has articles on a DIY PCI card. The card is
> available so that you can use it for prototyping. All sorts of things are
> possible. Then we have parallell and serial ports, network cards, scsi and
> gpib controllers, etc.
>