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> From: Harold Hallikainen <haroldhallikainen@JUNO.COM>
> To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
> Subject: Re: DTMF - Telephone Related
> Date: Friday, 13 June 1997 01:36
>
>         Speaking further of expansion...  What about this stuff of using
> a single chip micro, then piling so many other chips around it that we
> might as well have just used a standard microprocessor instead of a
> microcontroller?  It seems to me that microcontrollers are ideal for
> small designs where the vast majority of the functionality is on the
> controller.  However, if we have to start using the chip in an "expanded
> mode" where most of the I/O that we're paying for ends up being processor
> bus, aren't there less expensive ways of getting processor bus?  Also,
> asuming size constraints can be met, once we go beyond a certain size,
> how about just turning our design into an I/O board for the PC bus and
> using low cost motherboards that are already out there?  I did a project
> a while back where one of our I/O boards included EPROM sockets so BIOS
> would find and load our code instead of trying to boot from disk.  Lotta
> power for not much money!
>

You forgot to mention when using PC's for embedded apps the fact that
you've got really cheap development environments and C compilers...

MikeS
<mikesmith_oz@relaymail.net>