Mike Harrison wrote:

> 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.

Quite true, depending on the type of PIC. If you want SMD, add twoweeks. If
you want Industrial spec ("I"), add two weeks. If you want
a frequency other than 4MHz or 10MHz, add a week or two. If you
want one of the newer 8k parts, you might also be in for a surprise.

On the other hand, the vanilla flavour 4MHz, DIP, OTP, "C" parts
ar easy to get (as you mentioned).

--
Friendly Regards

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