[sdiy] Microcontrollers

[Jim Patchell]

    Talk about opening up a can of worms....

    I would look seriously at the AVR.  I am most familiar with this on, personally.
It is a very capable looking archetecture.  I am imcorporating the AT90S8515 into one
of my designs.  The newer PICs also look interesting, but, I have not really looked
into those much.

    Now from a historical point of view...the 6502 rules, IMHO.  I have written much
more code for the 6502 for synthesizers than any other processor...but, it is not quite
so widely availiable, and it is not a very C compiler freindly processor.  I have also
used the 68008 to control synths.  But, you cannot even get that one any longer.. :-(

    Other things you might want to consider, is the availiability of Real Time
Operating Systems for the chip of your choice.  For the AVR, I do know that the uC/OS
has been ported.  Although, if you have never used an RTOS before, and are sort of new
to embedded controllers, you might want to pass on the RTOS.  They do tend to make this
rather difficult to debug.


    -Jim


Nick Liebrecht wrote:

> Hi Everyone,
>
> I am in the decision making stage of a huge polysynth project for my
> self.  I was wondering what you guys think would be a good
> mirocontroller to use in this type of undertaking.  I only hve
> experiance with basic stamps and pc programming, so i really need to
> know what chip to study up on.
>
> Thanks,
> Nick Liebrecht
>
> "You'll find all you need in your mind, If you take the time."
>
> Dream Theater : The Official Site - http://www.dreamtheater.net/
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