[hpsdr] Yeti? Sasquatch relative...

[Lyle Johnson]

Sasquatch will be using a high-end TI floating point DSP.  That's the 
good news.

The bad news is that there are no inexpensive tools to use with it. 
That puts real pressure on the folks writing code for it, and severely 
limits everyone else's ability to play.

IS there interest in a simpler DSP board with free tools to allow easier 
experimentation?

For example, the Analog Devices ADSP-218x series of parts (the same one 
I use in my DSPx and as used in Pic A Star, DSP-10, etc.) has free 
DOS-based tools.  They run in Windows, as well, and probably under 
DOSEMU for the Linux-persuaded.

This is a 16-bit fixed-point part that runs at 80 million native 
instructions per second.  Analog Devices claims more, but that's because 
they assert that a multiply-accumulate is two operations, along with an 
address calculation and a shift...  So it does 320 million marketing 
MIPS under special circumstances.

Anyway, this could be a fun and cheap part to play with for those so 
inclined.

Texas Instruments makes the TMS320VC33.  This is a 75 million native 
instructions per second (yeah, their marketing people claim more...) 
32-bit floating point part.  You can download a version of the tools for 
this part for free from the TI web site.  Takes a bit of playing around 
to use them without the "University DSK" for which they are intended, 
but they are free and do run.  There is also some sort of port to the 
Gnu compilers for this part, I think.  It has small enough memory and 
limited enough resources that you want to think twice about using C 
rather than assembler, though.

Anyone on the list know of any other DSPs that have decent, free tools?

Any interest in such a "Yeti" project for the HPSDR?

73,

Lyle KK7P









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