Electronic – TI Launchpad USB serial comms in OSX

The Arduino Ethernet shield is built around the Wiznet W5100. The chip provides a complete TCP/IP stack and can ethernet.

Porting the Arduino driver code to the Launchpad should be fairly straightforward, you'll need SPI and a few control lines.

http://code.google.com/p/arduino/source/browse/trunk/libraries/Ethernet/utility/w5100.cpp

Here's some Launchpad SPI code of mine to get you started:

http://blog.hodgepig.org/2010/09/10/575/

The Launchpad currently has no official shield standard though there are efforts afoot:

http://www.43oh.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=16&start=10

http://www.msp430launchpad.com/2010/08/shield-standard-proposal.html

One reason why the Launchpad is so cheap is because the chip it uses is a very low-end device, which is missing many useful peripherals such as a UART. You will find things much easier if you use one of the other, more capable, devices You will need a FET, of course, but they aren't all that expensive, and it is a very useful tool.

Pins 16 and 17 on the target device are used for debugging. It might be possible to use them in your application if they are isolated with resistors, Microchip recommends that solution for debugging their devices when the ICSP pins are in use.

Most people build software like that starting from a simple application using one peripheral, and then add the additional functionality to the same program. Combining programs can cause problems.

A useful resource for MSP430 development is this Yahoo MSP430 group.