In this Appendix I explain how to use the IAR Embedded Workbench Kickstart for MSP430, or EW430 for short. This is a free integrated development environment (IDE) but is limited to 4KB of C code. (That is more than enough for the examples in this book.) EW430 is produced by IAR Systems (www.iar.com), which also sells unrestricted versions, but Kickstart is distributed and supported by TI. IAR Embedded Workbench is available for a wide range of processors and I find it to be straightforward to use, predictable, and reasonably reliable if not the most powerful IDE that I encountered. It seems to get better with each release, which is less common than it ought to be. The only problem that I experienced at all frequently is that the emulator loses contact with the device when it enters a low-power mode and it is not hard to see why this might create difficulties.

TI itself developed another IDE, Code Composer Essentials (MSP-CCE430). A free, limited version of this can be downloaded from TI's Web site. The environment is based on the Eclipse open-source platform, with a distinctive look and feel. Some aspects, such as the directives in assembly language, are entirely different from EW430. Unfortunately I lack the space to describe CCE here as well.