[Oberon] PO2013 - Real time measurement

[John R. Strohm]

My experience was with the BF535, bare metal, some 12-13 years ago.  uCLinux 
was not an option for what we were doing.

-----Original Message----- 
From: Skulski, Wojciech
Sent: Monday, December 17, 2018 10:57 AM
To: ETH Oberon and related systems
Subject: Re: [Oberon] PO2013 - Real time measurement

John:
>Analog Devices Blackfin SPI devices are a nightmare.
>(Friends don't let friends do Blackfin SPI.  Those words are written in my
>personal blood, thank you for asking.)

It is not that bad in my experience. I used Blackfin a lot with very few 
problems. The trick was to use Analog Devices software, in particular their 
uCLinux. It used to be very well supported by Robin Getz and his cohort, 
until Analog Devices management stepped in and made "improvements" to the 
user community structure. The support immediately went down drain. (Sorry, 
Robin, it is my sincere experience.) I moved to ARM Sitara because of that. 
Well, if you think that Blackfin was tough then try Sitara instead. Sitara 
gives a whole new meaning to the word "nightmare".

Back to the topic, we used spidev under Blackfin uCLinux and it solved all 
our problems at the Blackfin side. The remaining problems were due to the 
ingenious modification of the SPI interface which Analog Devices made in 
their ADC chips. Namely, they combined the input and output pins into one IO 
pin. It saved one pin and created need to invert the pin direction with a 
command. What a genius has invented this idea.

Yes, SPI can be an endless topic over a beer and around a campfire.

Wojtek
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