Lawrence O. Lile wrote:
> My question is this - which line of microcontrollers offers the cheapest,
> down
> and dirtiest brain in large quantities.  I don't care how slow,
 how........snip.......
> but why bother if ONE chip will do?  I am familiar with the PIC series of
> course, and if you are buying a truckload of PIC 16C54's, mask
> programmed,
> they can get pretty low priced, $1.50 to $2.00 US, maybe less.  Is there
> a
> $0.50 cent microcontroller out there?

The closest thing I'm aware of is Zilog's lowest end Z8 part.  Last I heard,
these could be had for about $0.67 in 50K quantities.  The cheapest masked
version of the 16C54 was next in line at somewhere around $0.95 in similar
quantities.  The lowest Z8's features have a few disadvantages, as well as
a few advantages over the lowest PIC's.  But overall, they offer a level of
capability comparable to their PIC counterparts.


William Kitchen