[sdiy] how you got started with your current µC? (was: Re: Most common ICs)

[Terry Shultz]

Hi Guys,

The ARM Cortex M series are getting a lot of new designs in the embedded space.

Pretty cheap, tools aplenty, and plenty of inexpensive boards and projects. Having been a DSP 56k programmer at Motorola/Freescale for about 28 years,
I find it fun to be able to use a C compiler and quit programming in assembly all the time.

I have programmed the z-80 at E-Mu, 6808 and 68k at PPG and 6805, 6811, 680x0 and now ARM A and M series, I prefer working with the Cortex M4 and M0 for new audio
projects. Arduino and Beagleboard are good places to get your chops and tune up.

Proprietary devices are becoming the dinosaurs. The Coldfire devices were actually quite good but doomed when ARM launched Arm 9 and Arm 11 then the A series.

Try out the ST, NXP, Freescale Cortex M devices and see if you can get cooking quickly. All have a wide range of cheap platforms to play with.

best always,

Terry Shultz
> On Sep 19, 2015, at 4:24 PM, Vinicius Brazil <brazil.v at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I also ever use my own custom boards.
> 
> Vincius
> 
> On Sat, Sep 19, 2015 at 7:59 PM, <rburnett at richieburnett.co.uk <mailto:rburnett at richieburnett.co.uk>> wrote:
> I started using dev boards for PICs about 20 years ago for industrial projects, but these days I usually just go straight to a first hash of the intended hardware...
> 
> When you're just starting out it's nice to have a development board that guarantees the correct power supply, clock and reset signals are presented to the processor and a convenient method of programming, so you don't have to worry about these things.  It also often provides a few other built-in features too like some switches, some LEDs, pots, an LCD, RS-232 serial port, CAN port, USB etc.  However, I quickly realised that for most of the things I was developing I didn't use half of the things on the dev boards, and/or the quality of the Microchip dev boards was actually quite poor.
> 
> For instance Microchip's dsPICDem Dev Board only has a crappy 8-bit 8kHz CODEC on board which is fine for telecoms quality speech but completely useless for pro-audio applications, and doesn't have proper analogue and digital ground-planes either.  It also doesn't have MIDI in/out, uses a different LCD to the industry standard Hitachi alphanumeric standard, etc, and has really crappy thumbwheel "preset" pots for the analogue inputs that only last for about 10 turns before wearing out!  For these reason I usually make my own "dev Board" with just the features I want on it to help me develop whatever I'm working on at the time.
> 
> There's a lot to be said for knocking out the first version of hardware as early as you can, then you find out about potential hardware problems and deficiencies as early as possible.  Ground loops, unwanted noises, LCD glitches, switch bounces, etc...  Leaving more time to thing about and implement solutions.
> 
> -Richie,
> 
> 
> On 2015-09-19 22:46, Michael Zacherl wrote:
> I got curious:
> did you people start with a typical dev-board of PIC/AVR/STM32/... ?
> m.
> 
> On 19.Sep 2015, at 21:28 , Richie Burnett <rburnett at richieburnett.co.uk <mailto:rburnett at richieburnett.co.uk>> wrote:
> 
> No probs here either.
> 
> -Richie,
> 
> ---- Pete Hartman wrote ----
> 
> On Sat, Sep 19, 2015 at 4:43 AM, Gordonjcp <gordonjcp at gjcp.net <mailto:gordonjcp at gjcp.net>> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Sep 18, 2015 at 10:40:37PM +0100, Tom Wiltshire wrote:
> I'd probably have to agree. TL07x op-amps would be my most used IC. Not very glamorous, but they're the glue that holds a million audio circuits together.
> 
> Aside from that, PIC uPs for digital, and SSM2164/V2164 for analog.
> 
> I've never liked PICs.  They're slow, expensive and very hard to develop for, thanks to the sheer lack of support - and last time I looked you had to pay extra for surface-mount!
> 
> I used AVR for a bit but I'm moving over to STM32 - ridiculously cheap and ridiculously fast.
> 
> This must be a personal taste thing, as I have no problems at all programming with PICs.  The documentation is very good, and there are lots of examples to get over the most difficult part which is how to set the various switches (in AVR world the equivalent is the "fuses").  I've actually had more frustration figuring out how to set fuses, to be honest.  I haven't played with the STM32s, I'll certainly have to give that a try.
> 
> --
> http://mz.klingt.org <http://mz.klingt.org/>
> 
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