[time-nuts] favorite microcontroller module?

Bob Paddock bob.paddock at gmail.com
Wed Feb 20 11:05:47 UTC 2008


On Tuesday 19 February 2008 06:36:02 pm Robert Vassar wrote:

> I regard PIC chips as something to be avoided.  Horrible little
> architecture that should have died back in the 70's.  It gained a
> foothold with hobbyists due to the ease with which they can be
> programmed. 

The PIC gained a foothold due to Motorola, not Hobbyists.
At the time most embedded designs were moving to the 6805 family
for the low end (small pin count) chips.  Then Motorola said
"Sorry guys.  Detroit bought *all of them* for the foreseeable
future."  The PIC was the only real option at the time, outside
of the Zilog Z8; 8048 & 8051 had not yet moved to small
pin counts.  If it was not for that move by Motorola the 
 world would be a very different place today.

I have an original PIC data book from General Instruments here,
and if you read that today, you'd wonder why anyone would
want to design in this part intended to run a Washing Machine.
The PIC18, other than the RAM bank switching, is not that bad.

Don't write off the dsPIC/PIC24, those are good parts, more like
the 68000.  Also the PIC32 is based on MISP, so even Microchip
has learned their lesson.

> The modern '51's are just as easy, and in some cases 
> easier.  Some of them ship with bootloader that can be activated on
> reset, and programmed using the onboard serial port.  Last I checked,
> even the AVR's are missing out on that,

Almost all AVR's do have bootloader abilities, but you do have
to get the bootloader code in there with a programmer
the first time around.  That approach has the advantage
of giving you control of how you want to bootload,
IIC, SPI, Serial, CAN, etc...



-- 
                http://www.wearablesmartsensors.com/
 http://www.softwaresafety.net/ http://www.designer-iii.com/
                 http://www.unusualresearch.com/




More information about the Time-nuts_lists.febo.com mailing list