I've just (probably) obtained a development job whose main parameters
are:


CHEAP AS POSSIBLE
4 x 8 bit A2D required
CHEAP AS POSSIBLE
2 PWM outputs (fast as possible/slow as necessary)
CHEAP AS POSSIBLE
Variable frequency square wave output
Essentially real time multi-tasking.

Also, the whole job must be as cheap as possible :-)

While there are many nice processors available which would do the job
well most seem to fail the prime directive (ie cheap as ..).

The 16C71 or more modern variants seems to be about the minimum cost
choice. Volumes are about 50,000pa and I think it gets down to around
$US2 in this quantity. Less would be nice.

I currently do not have a PIC ICE.
This may finally be the time that I buy one.
It seems very likely that a real time trace buffer is going to be
useful.

Coding will very probably be entirely in assembler.


Questions:

Users impressions of

1.    What's available?
2.    What's it cost?
3.    How good is it (in comparative and absolute terms.)

would be welcome.

ICE PICK, PICMASTER, ICEPICK-junior are names that comes to mind but
I know there are a range of alternatives.
All replies most welcome.
Reply off list if you think the on-list bandwidth isn't justified.
If I get a good range of off list replies I will summarise the
results.



regards

            Russell McMahon