Rabbit 2000 - 1 Introduction

Designer’s Handbook 1
1. Introduction
This manual is intended for the engineer designing a system using the Rabbit micropro-
cessor and Z-World’s Dynamic C development environment. It explains how to develop a
Rabbit-based microprocessor system that can be programmed with Z-World’s Dynamic C.
This manual is preliminary. An improved manual will be issued at a later date.
With the Rabbit and Dynamic C, many traditional tools and concepts are obsolete. Com-
plicated and fragile in-circuit emulators are unnecessary. EPROM burners are unneeded.
The Rabbit microprocessor and Dynamic C work together without elaborate hardware
aids provided that the designer observes certain design conventions. The design conven-
tions are straight forward and enhance design creativity.
As shown in Figure 1, the Rabbit programming cable connects a PC serial port to the pro-
gramming connector of the target microprocessor system.
Figure 1. Dynamic C Programming
The Rabbit programming cable is a smart cable with an active circuit board in the middle
of the cable. The circuit board converts RS-232 voltage levels used by the PC serial port to
CMOS voltage levels used by the Rabbit.
Dynamic C runs as an application on the PC, and can cold-boot the Rabbit-based target
system with no pre-existing program installed in the target. The flash memory on the tar-
get system can be blank or it may contain any data. The cold-boot capability permits the
use of soldered-in flash memory on the target. Soldered-in memory eliminates sockets,
boot blocks and prom programming devices. However, it is important that the memory
have its software data protection enabled before it is soldered in.
PC Hosts Dynamic C
Rabbit Programming
Cable
Programming
Connector
Target Microprocessor
System
Rabbit
Microprocessor
Level
Conversion
PC Serial
Port