David Olson wrote:
> 
> This is a philosophical post...
> 
> As I pass through the many phases of emotions while PICing (mostly elation
> and depression), I tend to look at alternatives when depressed.
> 
> Like:
> 
> Other microcontroller companies - do they have better tools, third-party
> support, etc.
> PIC derivatives - BasicStamp, etc.
> Other languages - C, Basic, etc.
> 
> So, questions begin:
> 
> Why wouldn't I go with, let's say, Motorola?
> Does anybody use BasicStamps (or other high-level interpreted chips) in
> commercial products?
> 
> One of the biggest reasons I went the PIC route is the massive external
> support. Motorola, Intel, TI, etc. seem to have more of a "corporate"
> catering. In other words, I didn't get the sense as an individual with a
> dream, I would get some help from the Motorola community (could be wrong
> though...). It also helped that my local Microchip rep was much more
> friendly than the Motorola one.
> 
> We'll keep the language question out of this since there are volumes of
> PICMail on the subject already.

You are very lucky in the sense that you can compare 
apples with apples before committing to any vendor.

Mchip has a very active hobbyist/student following 
that they are looking after well. The reason is simple - 
once you've got yourself going on a micro, it is a lot 
of trouble to switch to another. 

ATMEL is selling at half the price of Mchip, and are 
*very* aggressively stealing the loyalty away from 
Mchip. They have also seen how strong the loyalty of 
us suckers can be.

Scenix, being the more flexible company, also realised 
that starting with a micro is expensive, so they are 
selling a programmer *and* emulator at around $200-$250 
depending on where you are. The parts are flash, and 
they are working on a whole range of plug-in software 
modules that you can use (RS232, I2C, LCD, SPI etc).
Damn nice micro.

Motorola is quite cheap, but the support and lead 
times stink. If you are not going to sell more than 
10 trillion / year, you don't have an ear. 

-- 
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