8051 vs. 68K

[Richard Martin]

Hi all:

I have been reading this list for a long time although I rarely participate.
It's good to see an email list where there's so much positive energy!

Anyway, I've been following the discussion about microcontrollers for patch
storage and midi stuff and I thought I'd throw in my $.02.

8051:	1.  Cheap (<$10 for some of the EPROM parts in volume)
	2.  On board UART, parallel I/O, RAM
	3.  Stone-age 8-bit instruction set that gets the job done

68000:	1.  More expensive
	2.  Have to add ROM, RAM, and possibly I/O ports
	3.  Reasonably elegant and modern 32-bit instruction set.

As far as programming goes, the 68K wins hands down.  There is really
no contest as far as ease of programming in assembly language.  Also, if
you want to, you can program the 68K in C.  There are a few C compilers
available for the 8051, but the 8051 architecture isn't really optimized
for C.  The GNU C compiler, which is free, supports the 68K family well.

You should also consider ease of debugging.  The normal way to debug 8051
code is with an in-circuit emulator.  With the 68K you can use the GNU
debugger and do source level debugging over an RS-232 line.

One drawback I forsee with the 68K in a DIY project is that some of the
more interesting parts in the 68K family are only available in surface
mount.  On the other hand, I haven't seen DIP 8051's in a long time either.

The synth programmer project might be simple enough software-wise that
you could code it for an 8051 in assembly and debug it by trial-and-error.
For something more complicated, like a midi-cv converter, I would prefer 
to use a 68K.

Richard