On 01/27/2016 12:24 AM, John Rehwinkel wrote:
> I did a lot of research and looked at many architectures before > settling on the Atmel AVR line, with their strong flash support > (Atmel was a big flash memory manufacturer), their $79 demo board > that also served as an in-circuit programmer (open source, with a > documented protocol, too), widely available tool set, and gcc support > so I could program in C. Early on, I took one look at the PIC architecture and dev environment, puked and stayed with the tried and true 8051. Then Atmel came along. Angles sang. Harps played.. OK, well I am getting carried away a bit. > > Over the years, Microchip slowly learned how the market works, and > eventually did document their programmer protocol, and even made a > hamhanded attempt to offer their tools for modern operating systems, > but they still had the horrid UI typical of MS-DOS software, and were > horrible bloatware. Atmel isn't much better with their Studio environment. Fortunately there are the GNU toolchains. > I'm a little dubious about Microchip taking over, and it would be a > shame if they attempted to shut down the AVR line, programmers, > tools, and support. They bought Atmel because Atmel is winning and MicroChip is losing in the embedded market. The hobbyists are a tiny segment. The commercial and consumer side are where they are winning. We're a tiny manufacturer but we've used well over a thousand AT90PWMs. If you take stuff apart to see what's inside like I do, you'll notice that more and more Atmel parts are winning design-ins whereas a few years ago PICs would have ruled. > > Fortunately by now, the Arduino movement has branched out, and > supports a wide variety of other CPU architectures (ARM, MSP430, LXP, > the pointless Intel efforts, and many others), so even if Microchip > kills off that cash cow, I'll have my pick of architectures to move > to (these days, you can get a serious ARM CPU in DIP format, useful > for breadboarding). However, I hope they leave well enough alone. I do too. I'm results-oriented (I enjoy seeing the results of my work, not the work itself) so I don't want to have to learn another architecture if I don't have to. I am dipping my toes in the ARM waters but there are so damn many variations... Already made one mistake with the BeagleBoard Black. John -- John DeArmond Tellico Plains, Occupied TN http://www.tnduction.com <-- THE source for induction heaters http://www.neon-john.com <-- email from here http://www.johndearmond.com <-- Best damned Blog on the net https://www.etsy.com/shop/BarbraJoanOriginals <-- Affordable Fine Art Originals PGP key: wwwkeys.pgp.net: BCB68D77 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/56A8C6F1.9090507%40neon-john.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
