| Neuron Chip |
| Motorola Between 1991 and 2000 Motorola manufactured the Neuron Chip, and was one of the major backers of LonWorks technology. Motorola LonWorks Technology contains the Neuron Chip data book and various application notes written by Echelon and Motorola folks. It's a fount of useful information about LonWorks, and used to be available on Motorola's web site, but alas no longer. So I've preserved this classic work here. This is Revision 5, published in 1998. These documents may contain errors, so you shouldn't necessarily believe everything that's written in them. And don't expect Echelon, Toshiba, or Cypress to answer your questions on this material. Table of Contents (57KB) Volume 1 - The Neuron Chip Data Book (2.2MB) Volume 2 - Echelon's Engineering Bulletins (1.1MB) Volume 3 - Motorola's Application Notes (1.9MB) |
| Assembly Language Programming You write programs for the Neuron Chip's APP CPU using the Neuron C language. The Neuron C compiler generates very space-efficient code, and makes heavy use of the system firmware library to do complicated things and to save space. But very occasionally, you might want to write a few lines of assembler, typically for time-critical I/O routines. Don't make a habit of it - you have to write codes with no bugs, because there is no assembly-level debugger. These files document the Neuron's instruction set, and how to write very simple Neuron C callable functions. No longer available |
| Special Purpose Mode Interface The Neuron's communication port can talk to intelligent transceivers using the so-called Special Purpose Mode interface. The best available documentation is this U.S. Patent filing that covers the SP Mode interface. If you'd like to search for other patent filings, see the Delphion Intellectual Property Network. |
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