I am surprised to learn that the AT91SAM7S-EK eval board does not bring out all three UARTs. It seems like such a basic functionality would be provided. This is especially surpising when I found out that there is an unused transmitter and receiver in one of the RS-232 chips!

I need all three ports, so I am going to wire up UART1 to the unsued IOs and bring it out to the same connector as the debug port. If anyone is interested I can provide the info on how to make the change. It looks like it will require one via drilled since it is under the IC and one trace cut with four jumper wires.

Pretty simple... but I have not done it yet, so I'll wait until I have tested it before I post it.

Hi,

we are talking about evaluation kit and not development kit, so as you should understand, having every connectors for every on-chip peripherals, would have a big impact in cost... So, for less than $150, you can play with the SAM7S device and anyway, IO expansion connectors are available to expand the use.

Rgds
JP

I think you missed my point. With the addition of nothing but a couple of wires, I can add UART1 to the same connector as DBGU. Then I can use the extra pins as handshakes or I can make the connector two serial ports by using a special cable.

Actually I spoke with our software guy today and we decided to add a jumper so that UART1 can be connected to the RS-232 chip and J3 or we can make direct connections at the header. This will let us make a direct connection as we will in our end system and it will let us connect to an RS-232 PC port for other testing.

I assume you are with Atmel. If you want, I can send you the changes so that you can add the traces and jumpers to your board to provide more flexibility. I won't even charge you for it...