AT91 Eval Board

hi, i have got an AT91 EB40 evaluation board.
i have had it for about 6 months now, and havent used it yet.
the problem is that i have no software for it(aside from a manual disk). as i understand it, there is a bootloader program which can be accessed via the serial port using an IDE called ADS, which i believe has been superseeded....twice. the bootloader is used to load programs into the ram.

all i want to do is write a little C program which spits out a character or two through the serial port, or maybe turns a light on/off.
The problem is that i have no idea how to interface to the bootloader(the file loading protocol, control codes, bitrates etc.).
is there some FREE linux IDE that i can use with this board?
ive read somewhere about a program called arm-elf-gdb. is this relevant?
ive also read about a debugging utility - angel. what does it do?

thanks in advance for any replies