[time-nuts] I want a good micro-controller

[Luis Cupido]

Another view !

I found myself going in another direction recently...
PC104 :-)
...


Designing a board for a really small think, one's
favorite either PIC 51's ATmel freescale or whatever
seems to be fine.

A small demo board or existing PCB from some vendors
seems fine to me also.

but when it comes to a medium to high power thing
lets say in the ARM category and above,
it becomes a lot easier to use a PC104 board.
Specially because those pop-up on ebay at less than
most of the kits and demo boards for uC that have
1/100 of the processing power.

Not to mention the tools available that are the same
as any for the PC architecture... Compilers assemblers
etc... sky is the limit.
ROM can be a compactFlash-ide disk, a few bucks you get 1Gb
if you want, plus Ethernet, LCD/VGA USB LPT, 2xRS232 etc
(depending on the specific model).

For more complex things it just doesn't pay to make a specific
PCB (unless for big qty business production)...

Last year I got on ebay a few 233MHz Pentium PC104 with
eth10/100 + 2xRS232 + lpt + 2xusb + Kb for 30euro each!!!
What else could we do with that money ?! ;-)

Ok fine they eat 5V at 800mA... not exactely low power...
but there are better ones...

my 2 cents ;-)

Luis Cupido.
ct1dmk.