AVR-Chat

Hi,

>> Try the MAX3110E spi uart.  Makes it simple to add as many real
>> hardware uarts as you need to any project.

Too Pricy. If they lowered that MAX3110E price to $2.00, I'll use it. 

But, read on below...

Try this suggestion:

Master AVR micro (Mega8 or better with large Flash ROM) connected to
slave AVR micros via SPI. Recommended slave AVR micros:

ATTINY2313 (SPI and full duplex UART)
with MAX232 and caps

Cost: $2.00-$3.00 TOTAL PER RS-232 PORT.

Each ATTINY2313 slave micro is written with full interrupted UART to
capture the data into RAM buffer (up to 64). 

Master AVR (Mega8 or whatever) polls these slave AVR micros to see if
there are serial data stored in these buffer and then read off from
there.

Pretty simple and efficient.

Hope it helps.

Robert



__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com