Embedded processors for DIY projects ?

[Bjorn Julin]

>Hello group,

Hello individual!

>My first contat with them was made 2 years ago as i purchased one
>of the Ceibo/Philips development kits for the Philis 80C750 line. I thought
>that this would be a wise decision because it is an 8051 derivative, and 
>this
>CPU was told to me as to be very common. But when i tried to get some
>MCUs for a project, i found them to be really hard to come by.

The 80750, yes welly welly expencive.

Other 8051 derivates, no!

There are millions of variations on the theme 8051/31.
Why not some Forth on a 32k EEProm/Flash 8051 device?
Wery nice, checkout with Dallas semi, Philips ,siemens etc.
But still it is wery easy to port the code written on the
750 to allmost any 8051 deriviate o your chise is not that bad!
Or Forth on a HC11!

 >device for calibrating camera shutters), and i did not want to have 
problems every
>time i need some new processors.

Build your own in a FPGA.

>Then, last year a friend workong at Future Electronics told me that 
>Motorola would
>be the #1 in microcontrollers, and that for simple 8 bit processors the 
>86HC11 would
>be THE solution to me. So i got the HC11 welcome kit, and fiddled around 
>with it for some
>time. It was nice, but then i realized that the 1 KB EEPROM was not enough 
>for me,
>and the 2 KB versions are no longer produces - Bah !

Yes, no1, HC11 welly welly good, 2k is still manufactured
better availability is a plain HC11 E or F serie with external
Flash/EEprom or step down to the HC08/05 series with 32k Flash.

They are much easier to get in small quantityes.

I use HC11 in my Midi cv gate machine so
do frostwave and  others.

>So now i am in the search for a processor line to head for. What i am 
>specially interes-
>ted in, is:
>
>- Scalability (price-wise) there should be cheap units (no more than $15 a 
>piece) for

HC11!

>   simple devices that do not need much computing power, and also faster 
>ones in which
>   i could reuse parts of my code for more complex/demanding applications
>- Availability of an (affordable) in-circuit single step debugging tool so 
>i can plug a cable
>   into my current project at the bench and measure in/out lines with the 
>scope while
>   tracing instructions through the code

Good luck, your talking ICE and JTAG interface welly welly expencive!!

>- Availability of versions with 8 or 16 bits DAC´s and ADC´s

>- EEPROM programming memory to shorten development cycles, in sizes from 2 
>KB
>   to (say) 8 KB, larger sizes a plus
>- RAM 64 to 512 Bytes
>- The development system should not cost an arm and a leg. I am looking for 
>a starter
>   kit in the price range of $300 max.

Millions to chose from!

>- a C compiler would be nice (included in the IDE, not some external 
>cross-compiler)
>
>As far as i have seen, there are only AVR´s and PIC´s that would match my 
>criteria

Yepp!

>(ninus the C language)
>All other ones seem to have the old problems of being hard to get.

>Another issue would be the availability of these MCU´s in DIP cases, >so i 
>do not need
>to use an expensive and fiddly PLCC socket. (i do not have SMD >soldering 
>equipment)

Try PLCC to DIP IC holders welly welly nice, wery simple
and easy to design around , as easy as dip.

>Often i wonder why the decent development environments are so extremely 
>costly. Are the
>manufacturers not interested in getting new customers for their MCU´s

I do wonder to!

>I mean, for TI, AD or Motorola DSP´s, you often get evaluation boards and 
>kits for free...

Hmm where do you get that offer??? Interested to know!

>Any hints ?

Well!

Reg
BJ
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