Re: gEDA-user: wont be watching list :(

[Bob Paddock <bob.paddock@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tuesday 17 January 2006 09:13 pm, Eric Daine wrote:

> Could you give me some more info on these Renesas chips?

<RANT>
Hitachi screwed me big time on delivery before they became Renesas.

I designed in some H8 parts, really nice parts for their day.  I was quoted
a delivery time of eight weeks.  A nominal time for that era.  When the eight
weeks where up, the chips where not there.  I called them up and asked why
they where not there.  They told me "sorry, you can have them in twenty-six weeks".

Since it was time to ship our product we moved to AVR's, at rather
significant cost due to having to do quick turn boards and such.

We put Hitachi/Renesas on the list of suppliers to not trust, and avoid
using if at all possible.
</RANT>

> Been thinking about moving to the Atmel line as they too like the 
> Renesas chips are sort of built for C, from what I can gather the 
> PICs are ineffecient in this regaurd. 

The dsPIC's are nice parts, more structured like the old 68000.

> Still the idea of swapping to another line of micros gives me the 
> shudders and heebees, after all the quirks I have solved up to this 
> point with the PIC. 

Newer parts like the AVR, dsPIC etc. are all much easier to program that
the legacy PICs, especially in assembly language.