On Sat, 14 Mar 1998 22:13:38 PST, you wrote:

>Did y'all notice that motorola recently announced "the first" OTP
>microcontroller to sell for less than $0.50 (in large quantities, <$1 in
>small quantities.)  It's a 68HC05 varient with 16 pins (10 IOs), not as
>(pin) efficient as a 12C508, but moderately interesting.  The way I read
>the selection matrix, this is actually a MORE capable version of their
>previous low-end 6805, but I might be missing something since I'm not
>overly familiar with their oddish numbering scheme.
>
>BillW

I've always been wary of using Mot (and SGS-Thomson) MCUs - whenever I
go to various MCU or PLD seminars, the one thing you can count on is
there'll be someone moaning about not being able to get hold of
Motorola parts! Probably fine if you know how many you want in a few
months' time, but with the increasingly fast time-to-market most of my
customers seem to want, parts with leadtimes >8-10 weeks are
effectively unavailable and I won't design them in if there is any
possible alternative. 
The nice thing about PICs (once they're in full production) is that
you have ALWAYS been able to get them at little or no notice, and MCT
state this as their policy (I think they aim for 4 weeks max, but in
practice I've never waited anything like that for volume)  and there
are so many varients that it would often be possible to substitute
another part to bridge short-term supply problems.

     ____                                                           ____
   _/ L_/  Mike Harrison / White Wing Logic / wwl@netcomuk.co.uk  _/ L_/
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