Issue
161 December 2003
Easing
into eZ80Acclaim!
eZ80Acclaim!
APPLICATIONS
The
amount of documentation that comes with the eZ80Acclaim!
development kit is overwhelming at first. I couldn’t
decide where to begin reading, so I wandered off on
my own. I kicked off the Developer Studio II IDE and
loaded a project called AcclaimDemo. I wanted to see
if this was going to be easy, or if I was going to be
forced to mull through the documentation maze for some
answers.
The
first test was to see if the demo compiled correctly.
The Developer Studio II IDE is as obvious as an IDE
can get. I clicked on the Build icon and the demo compiled
and linked without error. Because I had decided to run
away on my own and not read the documentation, the next
hurdle was getting my newly built code down to the eZ80F91
module mounted on the eZ80Acclaim! development board.
All
of the Zilog Developer Studio II IDE icons identify
themselves when you roll over them with the mouse. I
found the Connect To Target icon and clicked on it.
A few moments later, I got the dreaded “this isn’t working”
error message. I figured that my problem had to do with
the ZPAKII configuration because everything had compiled
and linked correctly. So I once again started wandering
through all of the pull-down menus and settings. I happened
upon a ZPAKII configuration window that contained an
IP address for the ZPAKII that I didn’t enter in my
serial-based ZPAKII device setup. With nothing to lose,
I changed the “incorrect” IP address to my chosen ZPAKII
IP address (i.e., 192.168.0.50). I clicked the Connect
To Target icon again and waited for the error message
that thankfully didn’t appear.
The
Developer Studio II information window was all smiles
and informed me that the ZPAKII had indeed established
an Ethernet connection with all of the parameters I
had entered in the ZPAKII setup. In my wandering through
the Zilog Developer Studio II IDE, I identified almost
all of the icons. I clicked on the Download icon and
my newly compiled and linked eZ80Acclaim! code began
to flow from the Developer Studio II IDE through the
ZPAKII and ZDI target interface module to the eZ80F91
module. A blinking “RUN” LED on the ZPAKII provided
positive acknowledgment that things were going well
with the transfer. OK. Here we go.
I
started a 56-kbps Tera Term Pro terminal emulator session
on COM1 of my PC and clicked on the debugger’s Go icon.
Nothing happened. A few moments later, I realized that
I had my PC’s COM1 tied to the ZPAKII serial interface.
I figured I didn’t need to interface serially with the
ZPAKII at that point, so I moved the COM port connector
to the eZ80Acclaim! evaluation board’s console connector.
I clicked on the Developer Studio II IDE’s Reset icon
and restarted the Developer Studio II IDE-to-eZ80F91
module download process.
Success!
The Tera Term Pro session came to life with information
about the eZ80F91 module’s Ethernet connection. The
module also used DHCP to pick up an IP address from
the Florida room’s router. A shell was started, and
my first instinct was to enter a question mark (?).
I was greeted with the list of commands.
The
first thing I tried was to ping my gateway device at
192.168.0.1. No problem. Hmm, I wonder if I can ping
my web cam server at 216.53.172.209? I asked myself.
Yep, I was really dangerous because I had not read any
of the core eZ80Acclaim! documentation and I was able
to access devices on the Internet with the eZ80Acclaim!
evaluation board. There was a mail command in the shell’s
command list. I tried sending an e-mail.
I
entered the mail
command and was immediately prompted for my SMTP server
name. I was then asked for a port number, a subject,
recipient and sender e-mail addresses, and the text.
A few seconds after completing the text, I received
the e-mail I had generated with the eZ80Acclaim! development
kit.
At
that point, I thought things were pretty cool because
all I’d done was look over the demo source code, build
it, and run it. I saw something about a web server in
the source code, and it was mentioned again in the Tera
Term Pro session. The eZ80F91 module picked up 192.168.0.12
from the Florida room router, and I entered that IP
address into the address window of my browser. Photo
3 appeared. OK. I was duly impressed. In fact, I was
so impressed I wanted to know how this was done. It
was time to stop playing around and read the documentation.
|
(Click
here to enlarge)
|
Photo
3—This is a highly modified unofficial Zilog eZ80Acclaim
index.htm page. It was really EZ to make all of
my little modifications. |
