Newbie: Beginner Questions[long]

From: Sukrit K Mehra (holysmoke_at_amaltaas.biz)
Date: 02/29/04 

Date: 29 Feb 2004 02:33:09 -0800

Background:I have done interfacing of PIC16f877 and 8051 with an ADC,
DAC, stepper motor, LCD etc using port pins. Using this method I can
interface anything with a uC.

1. I want to learn interfacing using I2C or any other bus.
What I don't understand is how are the control/data registers mapped
onto the uC i/o or memory space?

When I interfaced a LCD, I used the port pins and each pin represented
a bit on the LCD. I used 8 pins for data channel and 3 pins for
control (or something like that).

2. In my course I first learnt how to glow leds using the port pins of
a uc. Extrapolating from that knowledge I have been able to interface
all kind of hardware - adc, dac, lcd etc. Now that's just one way of
interfacing. Buses are another and I don't understand them; there are
many to choose from: I2C, USB, PCI, ArmBus, ISA etc. What would be a
good example bus to learn so that I am at a level that I can simply
look at the data*** of the device or bus specification and use that
particular bus technology?

3. What are board support packages? If I compile a gcc toolchain for
an arm based hardware, build any custom device drivers needed and
install linux on it, would I have built a board support package?

Regards

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