[time-nuts] favorite microcontroller module?

[Chuck Harris]

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.

Wow!  I guess I should stop using them.  I have placed thousands of
PIC's in devices that I have built for the military, and never had
even one fail.

I program them entirely in "C", and mostly use the units that have
a 10 bit ADC, and a PCM cell on board.

   The modern '51's are just as easy, and in some cases
> easier.

And I assume they have them in 6 or 8 pin surface mount with 4 or 5 ADC
channels, and a built in clock oscillator that has a better than
1% accuracy over the full military/industrial temperature range?

Oh, and I forgot, a uart on every pin?

PIC's are the greatest little problem solvers in existence.

   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, though they're relatively  
> easy to program as well, and have an arch better suited to C.

Who cares?  PIC's program very nicely in "C" too.  You have to remember
they are a very small machine, so stupid things like recursion are out,
but I have rarely found that I couldn't do what I wanted to do with them.

And CCS's $100 "C" compiler produces code that is as good or better than
I can do in assembler, and I am no slouch in assembler.

-Chuck Harris, Not a hobbyist!