William Chops Westfield wrote:
>
>     1) All the other vendors have already gone flash. Not Microchip. My
>        customers want to know why we cannot just reprogram (I mean everybody
>        does it, right?). When I politely try to explain to them that Microchip
>        chose not to go flash when they should have, they tell me : "We don't
>        give a damn" This is a valid attitude.
>
> Huh?  There's a very small subset of microcontrollers available with flash
> program memory, and MANY of those carry a hefty price premium.  Looks to me
> like Atmel is the only manufacturer throwing flash controllers in the
> very-low-end arena, with microchip coming in second by having the 16C/F84.
> What other $6 or less flash microcontrollers are YOU talking about?
Huh? Did I say $6 or very-low-end? How about mid-range? Have a look at
Motorola.
For my purposes, a 84 is little other than a reprogrammable 555 with
extra pins.
>
>     2) All the PICs out there already have ICE capability built-in on the
>        silicon. Why not use it? Why make people pay $2490 + probe for an ICE
>        when they can get it for $5 ? (Wait - I think I am getting it)
>
> I don't want the pins wasted.  I thought (special) bond-out chips were
> common practice for microcontroller ICE support.  It'd be cool to have the
> "extra" 4 pins on a PLCC-44 be some sort of background debugger interface,
> but I don't want my 18 pin controller to be a 24(?) pin controller...
They don't actually have to be on extra pins. Even if they had to be,
two
pins would be a small price to pay. Scenix use the (existing) osc pins.
I'm
not sure how Motorola do it though.

--
Friendly Regards

Tjaart van der Walt
mailto:tjaart@wasp.co.za
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