> It needs to drive a display of some form (standard LCD is fine but > other options would be good) and since nearly all my references are > based on 10MHz it would be nice if it could be clocked at that speed. > I used to program the Acorn Achimedes and so ARM would be nice and > since I'm a 20 year experienced C programmer (not C++) then that is > what I'd like to program it in.
> Thoughts, ideas, comments would be appreciated! Are you looking for a chip to use in a board you are going to design, or an existing board that will do your job, possibly with some hacking? I'm not up to date on boards. The mega-donkey looks like a good straw man. (I think you need something else to program it.) Vendors often have inexpensive low end development kits. (Some of the high end boards are quite pricey for a hobby project.) Here is a sample: http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail?name=ATAVRDB101- ND (It needs a programmer too.) Have you considered using a laptop? Older (real old?) ones had printer ports so you could get a PPS in. Assuming you are looking for a chip: I know of 3 families of 8 bit chips: AVR from Atmel, PIC from Microchip, and 8051s from several vendors. It's a cut-throat market area. I think they all make chips that are roughly equivalent. If you need something more powerful, the ARM chips are probably the way to go. I like the Atmel chips, both ARM and AVR. Their I/O units are generally not too quirky and the documentation is pretty good. Digikey carries them. They usually have a one page sheet that compares all of their chips. Here is a sample, but it doesn't show the I/O stuff. http://www.atmel.com/products/AVR/default_picopower.asp > Oh and cheap! I don't think the price of the CPU chip will be a big deal for a low volume project. Things get interesting if you want to buy a million of them. Often, a vendor will make several versions of a chip with the same I/O but different sizes of RAM/Flash. For a hobby project, I'd get the biggest one, just in case. Odds and ends: If you have a PPS, you probably have 10 MHz too. If you can use that for your CPU clock, then you don't have to worry about calibration. Running off batteries won't be a problem. All your power will go into the backlight for the LCD. :) -- These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
