Re: uC selection

On Mar 15, 8:26 am, MooseFET <kensm...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mar 14, 5:14 pm, "Jon Slaughter" <Jon_Slaugh...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Currently I use microchip pics but I'm looking possibly to switch, but what?
Is Atmel worth it?  What about TI?  I'm looking for something similar to
microchip but more of a commercial aspect. I have never seen any commercial
device that uses a pic and I assume there are reasons for this?  It seems
that pic's are only for hobbiests so using them in a commercial product is a
no-no?

Real men use 8051s.  Lots of people make them.  They have a very nice
instruction set and can, if needed, address quite large amounts of
external memory.  If one 8051 isn't good enough use two or more.

Over the last 30 years, I've designed using 6502, 8080/5, 8051
derivatives, Z80 derivatives, several PIC families, and numerous
Motorola/Freescale chips. For me, the development tools are the key
preference factor. Good tools save time and aggravation. For small to
medium production volumes, you can easily spend any savings on chips
in the development process. Even for large volume projects, time to
market may be more important than chip cost.

My main complaint about Microchip is that their tools remain
relatively buggy. I've spent hours with their engineers working
through obscure problems, only to find out that someone there knows
about the problem, but Microchip and/or their tools partner hasn't
gotten around to documenting or fixing it yet.

I've come to favor Freescale chips and their CodeWarrior tools. At
first, I hated CW for its complexity. It seemed like gross overkill
for many projects. However, since Freescale bought Metrowerks and they
came out with Version 5, using CW has gotten a lot simpler. For me, it
has a good combination of advanced features and simplifying
'templates'. Compiler code efficiency and execution speed are
astonishingly good and bugs are very rare.

YMMV.
Paul Mathews
.

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