AVR tutorial 1

Last change : 19 May 2010 moved some links off site.
change : 13 November 2006

This tutorial steps through the installation and setting up of your free AVR C compiler suite.

AVR introduction

The AVR is an 8 bit Harvard architecture RISK processor. 32 accumulators and 3 pointers make the AVR ideally suited for C. With a few exceptions, at 16MHz an AVR runs at 16MIPS. Other hardware features includes ADCs,various counter timers,uarts,spi,i2c and separate interrupt vectors.

For a more in depth look, here http://www.atmel.com/dyn/resources/prod_documents/doc8159.pdf ( > 6MB ) is the data sheet.
This excellent but cheap processor will be extensively used in the coming tutorials.

WinAVR

The GCC compiler is a free, reliable and constantly updated compiler suite. It is true that some commercial compilers provide a more unified graphical user interface, but few, if any provide the flexibility and with it the power, that GCC provides. GCC has been ported to dozens of processor types running on various operating systems. This version is specifically for the AVR, running on a Windows based PC. Once a person becomes familiar with GCC, the lack of a unified GUI tends to loose its relevance.

Download the GCC compiler from here (WinAVR-20060421 (23MB).
Newer versions are available from here. The software on this site however can only be guaranteed using older software as it has not been retested with the latest winavr version.

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