Re: gEDA-user: Renesas&Pics

[Mike Jarabek <mjarabek@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

On Wed, 2006-01-18 at 08:57 -0500, Eric Daine wrote:
> Thanks all, Bob, Charles, and DJ, for the feedback on the Renesas chips,
> 
> I am very glad to hear more about them.  I was not aware that there was 
> another line
> of microcontrollers that worked with GCC, so I'll spend some time 
> researching them,
> your feedback will be very helpful.
> <SNIP>

If you want another line of Micros that can use GCC, don't forget about
the ARM cores.  They have appeared in many places including the Gameboy
Advance. For $80CDN you get a backlit LCD display, 256K of RAM, power
supply with battery backup, and a 4Bit I/O port, or 8 bit UART with 3.3V
TTL level outputs with several standard baud rates.  To make the whole
thing more useful, you can order a gizmo from Lik-Sang called `Gameboy
Advance Movie Player' that houses a CF card slot that you can use to
boot up homebrew programs into the RAM...  I am using mine to control a
lighting system I built.  The source code and schematics can be made
available, but are somehting of a hack.

NOTE: I have not tried out the OKI chip below, the following comes from
readind the datasheets I downloaded.

Just the other day, I found that Oki semiconductor has released an ARM7
with peripherals, they call it `ML67Q4050' and `ML67Q4060'.  They have
from 64K to 128K of Flash rom on them, and it looks like you can program
them via the onboard serial port, by using Intel Hex file. (E.g. from a
terminal program.) They do have some internal SRAM, but it's a paltry
16K. Depending on the package they have up to 40 I/O pins to use. They
also come in two flavours, one with an external bus, and one without. I
would recommend the external bus version, it appears to have all the
needed decoding logic built into the chip already, just hook up an SRAM
and go. These chips run at 33MHz, so they have lots of power for most
embedded hobby applications. The datasheet/manual appears complete, but
lacks some polish.  E.g. it gives information about what all the bits do
in the registers, but does not give a lot of examples of how to use
them.  The UART in there has the layout of a 16550, so getting a console
port working should not be too bad.

These are available from Mouser Electronics for between $10 and $15USD.
Have not checked availability. Not too bad for what you get.

Mike