Cecil Bayona wrote:

>I'm debating if I should purchase a copy of SwiftX for the MSP430 family
>for non-commercial hobby use.
>
>It looks to me as a very well done development environment, but there
>are a couple of issues that are holding me back from making the purchase.
>
>1. The cost, $450 is a bit steep for my hobby use, but I can overlook
>that if I would use it in every project from now on, that would make the
>cost easier to bear.
>2. Lack of project management, how hard is it to deal with many
>projects, somewhere in the range of ten to twenty projects without the
>project manager?
>3. Lack of optimization, this one is hard to deal with, many of my
>projects are small in nature and use tiny CPU's that don't have a lot of
>Flash so they can be cost efficient.
>
>If you have experience with items 2 or 3 I would appreciate your
>feedback, you can send me a private email if it makes you feel more
>comfortable.
>
>I would appreciate feedback on the package as a whole, how productive
>are you, how easy is it to debug problems?
>
>I recently purchased the demo version and I will be playing with it, but
>due to size limits with the demo I would not be able to write anything
>of any consequence.
>
>This decision would be a no brainer is SwiftX followed the same model as
>SwiftForth in that full functionality is available in both versions, the
>difference being availability of the cross compiler source. Things are
>not always like I wish, but since Forth Inc has been around quite a
>while, it's obvious they know what they are doing and I'll have to deal
>with reality as it is.
>
>Your feedback is appreciated.
>
>
>
>
I am using Swift-Forth for the MSP430F149 CPU. It costs only 7 EUR and
has the same extended low current functionality like the smaller MSP430
so there was no need to step down to smaller controllers.

Swift Forth for the MSP430 works quite well, the applications are stable
and you should have no trouble to build your own application.
But in my opinion there are some major drawbacks wich you should take
into consideration:

- there are a huge amount of assembler software for the MSP430 which you
can't use because the Forth-Assembler is incompatible to the Texas
Intruments code. The combination of Swift-Forth and the Forth Assembler
is very good and easy to use but incompatible to the rest of the MSP430
world.

- the Swift Forth for the MSP430 is a rather plain development
environment and if you want to use the extended hardware features of the
MSP430
you have to work through the original Texas Instruments manuals and
assembler code examples and rewrite the existing code in Forth assembler
and Forth. It is like the invention of the bysicle a second time.
For example in Swift Forth there was no code to support the
AD-converter, the various types of serial interfaces I2C, SPI, RS232
etc. the build in comparator, timer, watch dog....

- no floating point support in Swift Forth for MSP430 and despite was
Forth Inc. say, it is essential in measuring applications. The MSP430 is
fast enough.

All these problems are already solved in the Texas Instuments assembler
code.

I think if you only want to use small MSP430 - controller without the
need of the multitasking capabilities of Forth, you should use the plain
assembler and the original TI- Hardware Tool. It cost only 45 - 100 EUR
and using Forth you would have to deal with the assembler anyway.

It is not hard to manage Projects in SwiftX because you can place each
project in its own file.

I have no experience with code optimization. I personally think that
swift is rather destined for the larger members of the MSP430 family
(the smallest supported device is MSP430F133)

As an alternative Forth you should consider the IRTC -Forth by
www.ram-tech.co.uk. It is less expensive and supports a wider range of
MSP430 CPU.

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Received on Tue Mar 15 2005 - 03:07:29 PST