As a student being forced to learn the LPC21xx microcontrollers as part of my degree, I have found getting information and help extremely poor.
Everything points you in the direction of the data sheet/ user manual, but the reason Im looking for help else where is because Im not getting what I need from the manual. How backwards is that!
Also when you post a thread on this site no one gets back to you. Does anyone actually run the site? and does anyone actually reply to technical questions that actually may help others at a later time? I think not. I think Ive got a better chance of recieving a reply from this rant!
I think ARM and Keil should be ashamed and take a leaf out of Microchips book, as the help avaialable for the many devices they supply is vast!
Rant over
This is not an official support forum.
Official support is handled by the official support channels visible at top/bottom of the web pages.
You can't tell the developers around the world that they should be ashamed of themselves if they decide to not spend time answering your questions. They can make more money by solving own problems.
There are huge amounts of information available on this forum, on the Keil site, on NXP:s site besides all the information available using Google.
What _specific_ problems do you have? Realize that most threads here are of the type "I have a school project - what should I do".
But once more - if you can't figure out how to read the 3rd channel of the ADC, you can't blame the other people who visits this forum for not spending time checking through the user manual and then supply an answer. That you haven't seen an answer is most probably because no one have recently worked with the ADC of the LPC21xx.
One more thing - who should support?
Microchip sells processors. So they have an economic incentive to help even students.
Atmel sells processors - same there.
ARM sells processor cores to other companies. So it would be NXP, Atmel, ... that should help people who can't understand _their_ manuals.
Because you can't really claim that you are stuck with an ARM or Keil problem. The NXP21xx may have an ARM core. But it is NXP who have taken an ARM core, and glued on lots of peripherials. And then written a manual documenting their processor. Keil just supplies the compiler. So their documentation and support responsibilities are about the compiler, RTX, etc. Still not any NXP ADC.
Point taken however, any type of search you do on google just gives you links to the user manual, and there doesnt seem to be any usefull sites on the simpler functions of the micro like the A/D. I realise my rant was probably a bit harsh but after the transition from Microchip to ARM, It just seems like there isnt any support for people trying to learn on the ARM devices.
Even though there are probably 3 ARM devices for every person on the planet, does it not make more sense to invest in providing support for new users? As these are the people that are going to be using the devices in the future.
I've never used Microchip MCU's, but I hear ARM devices are substancially more complex in general. Accept it as a fact of life. You might as well learn the complexity, it might do you good in the future. Once you've done one of them, the others will look much simpler.
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