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From: dana@lando.la.locus.com (Dana H. Myers)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Small chip count microprocessor projects
Message-ID: <5602@oolong.la.locus.com>
Date: 16 Mar 90 20:45:08 GMT
References: <1247@swbatl.sbc.com>
Sender: news@locus.com
Reply-To: dana@locus.com (Dana H. Myers)
Organization: Locus Computing Corporation, Inglewood, CA
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In article <1247@swbatl.sbc.com> adams@swbatl.UUCP (Tom Adams - 235-745) writes:
>I'm interested in stuff that will fit on one proto-board, has a serial
>port, and provides some ttl level input and output.  Currently I'm 
>collecting information on suitable processors.  The Art of Electronics
>uses a  146805E2 in a low power application and a 68008 in a high 
>power signal averaging instrument.  An excellent recent article here
>mentioned the Motorola 68HC11A2, 68HC11E2, and 68HC11F1. These seem a 
>little high-powered for stuff I'm interested in doing & I wonder 
>what else is in common use.

    I've used a lot of Intel. I think there has yet to be a truly cooler
family of microcontrollers than the MCS-96 (include 8097, 80C196, etc.),
but this is probably overkill. For the record, the MCS-96 is very nice to
program, with a large amount of register RAM on chip and a 'RISC' type of
architecture. There is no accumulator and there are 3 operand instructions.
The MCS-96 family is a 16 bit family. Performance wise, in tightly coded
assembler, the 80C196 with a 12 MHz clock is roughly comparable to a 12 Mhz
80286 in terms of throughput (excluding interrupts and all that jazz).

  The 8051 family is ubiquitous, and works pretty well despite the fact
it isn't as nice as the 96 family to program. The later 51 family members
like the 80C51FA and the 80C51GB are actually really hot. The FA has a
trick capture/compare unit, the GB has extra ports and A/D converters.

   The 6805 stuff is roughly comparable to the 8051 family, though a
68HC705 draws about half the current than the 80C31BH, I don't think
there is a 6805 quite as sexy as the 80C51GB.

  If you have easy access to a family (already have a chip, get chips from a
friend, etc.), use it. Among the 8 bit CPUs, they're all quite comparable.
The only real differences are in the on-chip peripherals. The Motorola family
has a greater number of combinations, Intel has all the same features, but a
smaller number of variations.
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* Dana H. Myers WA6ZGB		| Views expressed here are	*
* (213) 337-5136		| mine and do not necessarily	*
* dana@locus.com		| reflect those of my employer	*
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