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

[ChristianH]

My very first processor development was an 8080 circuit in 1977/78
without PCBs, just wires and some flying IC sockets. Hard to believe,
but it actually worked. Then a substantially cleaner designed 8085 model,
and some Z80.

With micocontrollers, I started with the Atmel STK500 board, but
nowadays it is designated to be just a PC to ISP interface, since all of
my boards have the standard 6 pin ISP connector. Additionally, there's a
Dragon board for that very same purpose, when I'm debugging
multi-controller communication, so I can flash and look into both
controllers at the same time.
When populating a board, first step is to just solder the controller,
PSU connector, and ISP header, and then trying to talk to it from Atmel
Studio. And it has been very helpful for software development to add a
debug LCD header to each controller for logging events. Even the
cheapest smallest surplus LCD is better than poking in the dark. Since I
switched to Mega64 controllers some time ago, I don't have to worry
about some pins being reserved for it.
Started with Atmel assembler, but after trying the GCC compiler, I never
looked back, except for very few tiny assembly functions for critical
stuff.

Chris



On Sun, 20 Sep 2015 18:17:58 -0300 Vinicius Brazil <brazil.v at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I started with the discrete bitslice cpus, after the 8088/8086, 80188/186,
> 8051, and after National COP8 families and Analog Devices ADSP21xx, and
> finally Microchip PICs & dsPICs.
> 
> -Vinicius Brazil
> 
> On Sun, Sep 20, 2015 at 5:54 PM, Tim Ressel <timr at circuitabbey.com> wrote:
> 
> > My first proc was a COSMAC 1802, on a breadboard, with manual entry
> > switches, powered off a car battery, in a horse barn. (beat that!)
> >
> > The 6809 came at my first engineering tech position. It was a hand-wired
> > proto board. Then 68000 and 68020, then Atmel AVR. Recently DSPIC and
> > STM32. These were all pre-made boards.
> >
> > --TimR
> >
> >
> >
> > On 9/19/2015 2:46 PM, 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>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> No probs here either.
> >>>
> >>> -Richie,
> >>>
> >>> ---- Pete Hartman wrote ----
> >>>
> >>> On Sat, Sep 19, 2015 at 4:43 AM, Gordonjcp <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
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Synth-diy mailing list
> >> Synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
> >> http://dropmix.xs4all.nl/mailman/listinfo/synth-diy
> >>
> >>
> > --
> > --Tim Ressel
> > Circuit Abbey
> > timr at circuitabbey.com