Last week I told you about a conversation I had with Colin Miller, the manager of the Microsoft SPOT group, about the .NET Micro Framework. Since then, I have installed the .NET Micro Framework SDK, along with the EmbeddedFusion Tahoe Development Kit. That goes along with an EmbeddedFusion Tahoe board that Microsoft's PR firm sent me; they also sent an accelerometer daughter board, a "ball in maze" sample a Last week I told you about a conversation I had with Colin Miller, the manager of the Microsoft SPOT group, about the .NET Micro Framework. Since then, I have installed the .NET Micro Framework SDK, along with the EmbeddedFusion Tahoe Development Kit. That goes along with an EmbeddedFusion Tahoe board that Microsoft’s PR firm sent me; they also sent an accelerometer daughter board, a “ball in maze” sample application, and a lab manual for the sample. The accelerometer and sample application are not part of the standard Tahoe kit.The Tahoe board uses a Meridian CPU module , which combines a 32-bit Freescale i.MXS (ARM920T core) processor running at 100 MHz, RAM, FLASH, an LCD display, some buttons, and the Microsoft .NET Micro Framework. As you can see from the illustrations, the LCD display and the buttons are on top of the board, and the Meridian CPU module is on the bottom. The Meridian CPU supports many low power peripheral devices via the serial, i 2 C, and SPI interfaces. It isn’t obvious from the illustration, but for development the Tahoe board draws power from a miniUSB connection at the top left.Compared to the 8-bit, 12 MHz, Intel 8051-based embedded controllers that I grew up on, the 32-bit, 100 MHz ARM 9 is a speed demon. By the time you factor in the overhead of the interpreted .NET Micro Framework runtime, however, the performance doesn’t feel all that spectacular. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by 3,200 MHz desktop CPUs with multiple cores.Anyway, I’m finding playing with the .NET Micro Framework SDK and the Tahoe SDK luxurious fun, in my geeky, retro way. I remember writing assembly code to flip I/O bits on wire-wrapped breadboards for embedded controllers 20-odd years ago, and here I am writing C# code to flip I/O bits on a packaged printed circuit breadboard. The more things change… Software Development