At 10:51 AM 10/14/00 -0400, you wrote:
>
>Ummm, not so sure the current business is such a big issue.
>Other PICs draw only about 15 uA running at 32Khz, and I
>would imagine the same for '508.

Yes, typically 15uA, 23uA max. Which is at least 10-20x more
than a dedicated clock chip. It makes a real difference when
you are using an inexpensive coin cell of ~60-220mAh and you
anticipate long periods of power-off condition. Also, to to
get that low a consumption you have to disable the WDT which
makes recovery from a severe EMI upset more of an issue,
potentially. (Like the customer has to remove and replace
the battery or push a hidden reset switch rather than just
resetting the time). You could also use a spare port pin to
do this (assuming such things exist), say if no valid I2C
response is received then reset the clock chip.

> Also, Li batteries put out
>3v, so ........

Since the PIC doesn't have a built in power switchover circuit,
there will also (typically) be a diode drop in series. That
seems pretty close to the minimum (guaranteed) operating
voltage even with a fresh battery.

>You have to get this straight - Echelon reports to all the european
>firms, like Philips, Carnivore reports "only" to M$, and they probably
>don't care about I2C.

Ah, you are probably right. ;-)

Best regards,
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Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com
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