I hope you and other MSP430 users join and help out.  I've only been
    working with the part for a couple of weeks but I'm already very
    impressed and somewhat intimidated, frankly; the PICLIST is invaluable
    for getting over the complexity hurdles within Mchips parts, and no
    matter how nice a part it is the MSP430 isn't going anywhere without
    some developer community!  TI is very old-school in that way; I can't
    figure out how any company can watch Microchip and not learn.

Presumably, one of the reason that microchip flash parts are inexpensive
compared to their OTPs is that there is a LOT of competition in the
"general purpose flash microcontrollers" market.  Most of them are "better"
in some sense of the word than microchip's flash parts and many are cheaper
(assuming you can find some place to buy them.)  The PICs have great
availability to all types of users, good variety, and they've done the best
job on the 8-pin chips (Atmels 8pin chips were pretty funny, at least the
first set.)  (Microchip deserves some credit for basically INVENTING the
low-pin-count micro in the first place, I think.)

TI is doing a reasonable job of making tools available for the MSP430, and
they're pushing the MSP430 as their general purpose micro (over the
TMS370), so there's at least some chance of growing a broad user community.
The development tools are being offered at very low prices (At ESC they
were showing a $99 (?) jtag programmer for the newer flash parts, and I
swear that the QFP (PLCC?) ZIF socket on the thing was worth close to $99.  I
don't think I've ever seen a company offer "good" (ZIF) low cost
development systems for QFP packages :-)

One annoying aspect of the MSP430 is low (compared to a PIC) drive
capability on the output pins.  You can barely drive a normal LED...

BillW

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