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

[Bruce Griffiths]

Robert Vassar wrote:
>
> Good grief!  That's not a microcontroller!  :-)
>
>
>
> I like the MCS-51 family, but they're kind of goofy to program in C,  
> and 8-bit.  Upside, lots of vendors & variants, including the really  
> nice SiLabs mixed signal chips made here in Austin.  AVR is much  
> nicer to code in C, and has great tool support, but they're single  
> source, and I have read that Atmel is not always completely  
> forthcoming in their errata.
>
>
> Arm... If you need something that can run Linux.... But why not just  
> go for a Soekris board at that point?  :-)
>
>
> Rob
> KC6OOM/5
>
>   
You can do substantially better by using a suitable FPGA board.
One can create a hardware timestamp counter with multiple capture 
registers that wont wrap around in less than a week or more together 
with whatever simple processors required for decoding GPS receiver data. 
A simple 16 x2 character LCD display or similar is easily added for 
field readout. Keyboards and pushbuttons together with serial ports USB 
ports etc are often provided so communications with A PC for data 
retrieval /storage is readily possible.

Bruce