Peter L. Peres wrote:
[snip]

> The natural way to store data in a micro with limited space and
> limited maths is packed BCD. Then you need half the storage space of
> unpacked BCD, and no base conversions.

[snip]

With all due respect please, "limited space" is something that we used to
deal strongly in the 70ish or 80ish decades.  4004, 8008 and Z80 chips with
SRAM memories (external of course) were expensive and short, you really
needed to catch all the possible black magic you could hold, and thanks to
that dark age, we did learn how to do magical things.  Microsoft and Intel
show us that we shouldn't think that way anymore.

Bill Gates and Intel (+AMD) wizards just made a pact with the horny one,
memory and processor power should never be a problem, what do you want?
50GHz processing speed and 1TeraByte of DDRAM? No problem, can you wait 10
minutes please?

It is amazing how I can still producing a nice program in DOS assembly in
less than 2kBytes, and ANY windows something slower similar thing with
bells and whistles (that you don't need), with at least 3 or 4 DLLs and
more 2 or 3 INI files along with registry messup, will require at least 4MB
(if you are lucky) to do the same thing (of course with illegal operations,
blue screens, and all sort of nasty smell and smoke that you deserve by
using such commercial fries and catchup messy things) [UnixSoapBox Off].

At this moment, a customer is asking a solution to store at least 1MBytes
of data into non volatile SRAM.  I just gave him a solution using (AVR uC)
and Compact Flash 16MB memory that you can buy for less than $12, something
that can allow him to remove and transport the data, without needing a
saltinbank operator to squeeze the devices into a huge data collector.  Of
course that using BCD (for the apropriate data) could double this $12
memory, but this is another story.

Wagner Lipnharski - email:  wagner@ustr.net
UST Research Inc. - Development Director
http://www.ustr.net - Orlando Florida 32837
Licensed Consultant Atmel AVR _/_/_/_/_/_/




/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Wagner Lipnharski - UST Research Inc
Orlando FLorida - USA - www.ustr.net
/_/_/_/ Atmel AVR Consultant /_/_/_/

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