> Don't get me wrong, this risk is not specific to STM8 but exists for all > "old" microcontrollers, especially in these dynamic times. And most > other suppliers don't even offer such a program.
Most do. Intel for example has a range of products with 15 year life time manufacturing support on certain parts (generally those aimed at industrial markets). NXP has a formal list of "long life" products with 10-15 year guarantees from launch. Ditto a lot of others. Not all of them bother telling 'little people' about it. If you order enough or you are a big government body like the military then you get to discuss such matters. For small volumes it's also getting easier and easier to get pin compatible generic logic parts using things like the Trenz GODIL devices that put a Spartan 3E and level shifters and glue into a device that fits a 40-40pin dip socket but overhangs a bit and people have now built retro-replacement devices like the vLA128 for a long defunct logic array that fits in the same space as the original. FPGA and soft logic implementations for most of the really old processors are available both free and commercially, I suspect we are now at the point many of the old DIP ones you could squash a low end ARM system on the DIP footprint and run it as software within the original power/space budget just as people replaced 555 timers with PICs. Bigger problem is that 74xx through hole parts seem to be slowly but surely disappearing. Alan _______________________________________________ Sdcc-user mailing list Sdcc-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sdcc-user
