Just a small tip to test code generated for ARM Cortex-M3 using QEmu:

$ arm-none-eabi-gcc main.c -ggdb -mcpu=cortex-m3 -mthumb -T generic-m-hosted.ld
$ qemu-arm -cpu cortex-m3 ./a.out

You can download Code Sourcery toolchain here and QEmu here (also available from package management system of your favorite Linux distribution). Just unpack the toolchain associating the arm-201XqX/bin with your $PATH and run qemu.