[fpc-devel] Freepascal in microcontrollers

[Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho]

On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 5:07 AM, Andrew Haines <AndrewD207 at aol.com> wrote:
> Can freepascal be used on small processors that are 8 or 16 bits or does
>  it expect that there are at least 32 bits for most things?

FPC only supports 32 and 64bits platforms. I recommend using
commercial Pascal compilers for 16 bits / 8 bits. You may even be able
to find some free software ones, but I'd inspect their quality first,
because they may be unsuitable for commercial projects.

> I've been
>  tempted lately to start making little circuits with microcontrollers on
>  them. I realize that a great deal of the rtl/fcl would not be used on
>  these little processors.

If you want to use FPC then I'd recomend you to use a ARM board. If
it's too expensive for your product, then you can choose a cheap
microcrontroller.

It's trivial to find commercial Pascal compilers for microcontrolers, like 8051:

http://www.google.com/search?q=8051+pascal+compiler&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:pt-BR:official&client=firefox-a

Or PIC:

http://www.google.com/search?q=pic+pascal+compiler&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:pt-BR:official&client=firefox-a

If you still don't know which microcontroler to use I'd go for one of
those options. PIC is by far the cheapest of all of them. The
programming hardward cost is incredibly cheaper then for other ones.
PIC is very popular one for cheap / simple projects, and I've been
using it in project with great success. It also has a nice forum to
ask questions, which was quite important for me.

If you want something a little better, then 8051 is very popular in
the industry is various fields from automotive to CNC machines.

If you want even more power, then go for a ARM. There are even some
embedded x86 microprocessors, but they are expensive if you are
building something simple and cheap.

> Also since there is no OS on these devices does
>  that mean that for sure fpc cannot work?

I think this doesn't make any difference. The only thing is that if
there is no OS then you also have no RTL, i.e. if you want one you
have to write your own. Commercial compilers should provide a small
RTL.

-- 
Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho