Netduino alternative development options

I saw some posts where members discussed the use of freeRTOS on their Netduinos, I looked at it but I'm not sure it's the route I'd like to go with the Netduino.

I am looking for a more powerful and real-time environment in which to program the Cortex-M3 and get to use all it's technology.

Don't get me wrong, I love C# and .Net Micro Framework is great but it's inability to handle certain timing sensitive and real-time tasks makes my Arduino faster even though it's processing power can't compete. When I got the Arduino I quickly grew to dislike it's IDE even though it has more functionality out-the-box than Atmel Studio does, but I chose Atmel Studio over it at the end of the day for a few reasons. And now I want the same with the Netduino.

EG: To use SPI, UART, PWM and ADC. I manually configure the registers, handle data transactions, prescaling and interrupts etc. I want that same power over the Netduino's Cortex-M3.

Would I be able to achieve this?

I know about the ARM C/C++ toolchain for Eclipse which is also used for freeRTOS and then there's an evaluation version available of ARM DS-5 but I don't know if these tools would help me.

Any help/advice and/or pointers would be apreciated.

I'm guessing this may be impossible or maybe it's frowned upon due to the fact that there are no responses?

I am not sure what exactly you are asking... you kind of answered your own question in the last sentence in the original article.

It is certainly possible to program Netduino boards in C/C++, using toolchains you mentioned above. I am not familiar with ARM DS-5, but if you are looking for IDE then there are for example free/evaluation version of commecial products like Keil MDK Lite,  IAR EWARM, CrossWorks for ARM, free CooCox CoIDE etc. Usually, they come with a few sample applications and sometimes even with higher level libraries...

You can use any RTOS, as long as the appropriate microcontroller port is available, using supported toolchain/IDE - you'd have to check the particular RTOS documentation, based on what exactly you need/want to do.

Thanks but I don't seem to be finding info on the net as easily as I did with the Arduino, and with the Arduino or any AVR for that matter it's as easy as compiling a .hex file then flashing it using avrdude. But based on the netduino schematics it's in usb device mode (Correct me if I'm wrong) so how would I set up a programmer allowing me to upload the compiled files to it?

For STM32F-based Netduinos (gen 2), you can use DfuSe utility to upload firmware when the device is in USB bootloader mode. During development, it is better to use JTAG or SWD in-circuit debugger/programmer, such as ST-LINK/V2.

Usually, the IDE supports at least one such debugger, so it is relatively easy to deploy the compiled binaries, place breakpoints and step through the code...

Thanks for the quick replies and useful info. I'll definitely be taking a look at this and see what I can accomplish.