On Thu, Jun 24, 2004 at 10:21:09PM -0700, William Chops Westfield wrote:
> On Jun 24, 2004, at 7:09 AM, Spehro Pefhany wrote:
>
> >Microchip produced extremely cheap usable development hardware and
> >free software (at the time assemblers could cost hundreds of dollars).'
>
> Don't forget parallax.  They were selling PICs in 1s to hobbyists back
> when the only other microcontrollers you could get (as a hobbyist) were
> $30 8051s.

That's not exactly how I remember it Bill. 8031s were available in the
$2 to $3 range. But it required infrastructure to use, You had to add
EPROM, RAM, address latches and input and output just to get a basic system
going. Same with the others. One of the last non PIC systems I built was based
on a 68340. Same deal, RAM and EPROM were required to get it going. You then
had to work on a bootloader for development.

>  It probably didn't hurt that their "basic stamp" was based
> on a PIC as well.  It seemed to me like a lot of people grew from the
> stamp into PICs in general...

Yup.

>
> Nowdays...  Microchip and Atmel are still pretty much duking it out for
> design wins in the 'simple and robust microcontroller' arena.  Most of
> the competitors don't do anywhere NEAR the ~20mA output drive of the
> AVRs and PICs.  Which can be a PITA...

Another point is that the parts still work at 5V. The TI MPS430 is excellent
and inexpensive. But it's 3.3V only and IIRC only comes in surface mount
packages. As much talk that has been bandied about solderless breadboards,
for the hobbyist it's still nice to be able to plug a dip into one.

BAJ

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