Hi, The application is simply to transfer some information to a serial device (DSP) at power up and in the reverse direction on power down (although it does not have to happen at the point of power down..so no additional circuitry is required - the serial data could be read back frequently to gain the same effect). This presumably requires two i/o lines min for a device with on-board E2 or 3/4 for a separate E2. Essentially, the requirement is for the lowest cost solution to perform this, whether it be an all-in-one chip solution or cheap micro+external e2. Prices quoted have been for a PIC12C518 (but it does not have enough E2; 40 bytes are required min) @ ~$0.60 + 24L00 E2 @ $0.15 (not sure about the quantity for this price). Effectively, a one chip solution would be preferable but the cheapest combination of micro+E2 is also acceptable. It just has satisfy three requirements; to be cheap, cheap and cheap. Sorry to pester - oh, for Inet access to be resumed! Dan To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU cc: From: David VanHorn Subject: Re: [EE]: Lowest cost micro similar to 12C508? At 03:40 PM 10/1/01 +0100, D Lloyd wrote: >Hi, > >Unfortunately, my Internet access is down (precautionary measures regarding >the recent worm episode) so I cannot access this information, so.... > >My (probably faulty) recollection of the 12C508/509s is that they are >8-pin, 1K ROM, ~40 bytes RAM, on board brownout/osc/power on reset...and >possibly on board E2RAM (256 bytes?) Anyone know of an equivalent part that >is cheaper than this? I seem to remember that Holtek made micros that >appeared cheaper than microchip offerings but I cannot access their specs. >Speed is not an issue for this application. Failing that, anyone know what >the cheapest microcontroller is on the market for a 100K/annum requirement? Would help if we had an idea what price you are getting on it. Zilog has the Z86E02/04 which was quoted at something like $0.49 at one point. It's a masked part, they have OTP and emulators for development. They work a little differently, the ram is all registers, and you get something like 192 bytes IIRC. No EEPROM though. You get a timer, a couple interrupts (assignable priority) I'm liking the AVR2343 for a minimal components solution, 1kword ROM, 128 bytes of ram, 32 registers, 128 bytes of EEPROM, 8 pin DIP or SO, and no xtal/caps needed using it's 1MHz internal osc (equivalent roughly to a 4 MHz PIC) But, it's a bit under $2. -- Dave's Engineering Page: http://www.dvanhorn.org Got a need to read Bar codes? http://www.barcodechip.com Bi-directional read of UPC-A, UPC-E, EAN-8, EAN-13, JAN, and Bookland, with two or five digit supplemental codes, in an 8 pin chip, with NO external parts. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.