Embedded processors for DIY projects ?

[J.D.McEachin]

At 11:00 PM 10/31/00 +0100, Michael Buchstaller wrote:

>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. 

I've found Philips to have unreliable support and availability.  I just switched from a Philips 8051 clone to a similar Atmel/Temic part, and so far have been very impressed.  Emails to their support group at 2am are usually answered by 10am, they were generous with samples, and they are shipping NOW, rather than next month (with next month changing every month) like Philips.

I'm currently using the Temic 89C51RD2 - the 40pin dip is 8051-compatible, 1Kb RAM, 2Kb EEPROM, 64Kb FLASH which is programmable VIA THE SERIAL IN, and it has a 2nd DPTR register.  

I don't know if a free C compiler is available; I know there are commercial ones.  Not sure how much an ICE is (I debug by spitting data out the MIDI Out), but the 8051 family is so well supported that I'm sure there are several to choose from.  Check out www.8051.org for resources.

I migrated from programming EPROMs to using an EPROM emulator to FLASH programming via MIDI.  The latter 2 take about the same amount of time, but the MIDI programming is so sexy, I have to use it.  If you're developing music products w/ commercial possibilities, this is the way to go.

JDM