January 1999
Beginner to intermediate
200 pages
7h 43m
English
Content preview from Programming Embedded Systems in C and C++
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
40
Chapter 5
In this chapter:
• Understand the Big
Picture
• Examine the
Landscape
• Learn How to
Communicate
• Get to Know the
Processor
• Study the External
Peripherals
• Initialize the
Hardware
5
Getting to Know
the Hardware
5.
hard•ware n. The part of a computer system that can be kicked.
As an embedded software engineer, you’ll have the opportunity to work with
many different pieces of hardware in your career. In this chapter, I will teach you
a simple procedure that I use to familiarize myself with any new board. In the pro-
cess, I’ll guide you through the creation of a header file that describes the board’s
most important features and a piece of software that initializes the hardware to a
known state.
Understand the Big Picture
Before writing software for an embedded system, you must first be familiar with
the hardware on which it will run. At first, you just need to understand the gen-
eral operation of the system. You do not need to understand every little detail of
the hardware; that kind of knowledge will not be needed right away and will
come with time.
Whenever you receive a new board, you should take some time to read whatever
documents have been provided with it. If the board is an off-the-shelf product, it
might arrive with a “User’s Guide” or “Programmer’s Manual” that has been writ-
ten with the software developer in mind. However, if the board was custom
designed for your project, the documentation ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.