On Tue, 2005-07-05 at 14:12 -0400, Olin Lathrop wrote:
> John J. McDonough wrote:
> > There are some quirky things about the PIC30, maybe even quirkier than
> > the PIC16.
> 
> Like what?  My general feeling is the opposite.

Agreed, I'm intrigued to hear what quirks the op is speaking of.
Personally I've found the dsPIC to be a wonderful balance of what makes
the PIC architecture "good", and what makes other more conventional
architectures "good".

> > Downsides ... there are few programmers for it, and even Microchip's
> > don't seem to have all the bugs out yet.
> 
> You're going to need an ICD2 for dsPIC development anyway.  For hobby use,
> it works as a programmer too.  For professional production use, my ProProg
> supports the dsPICs.

For development an ICD2 is VERY important IMHO with the dsPIC. The sheer
power of those chips makes ICD so much friendlier to your sanity!

> > The 120 MHz clock affords the
> > opportunity to consume prodigious power, something pretty alien to the
> > nanoWatt crowd.
> 
> A full speed dsPIC can burn up a bit under a watt.  In many cases that won't
> be a big deal.  Of course you can always run the clock slower and it will
> consume less power.  It's a fully static CMOS design like all PICs.

Hehe, I guess it's just a matter of people forgetting how much
computational power a dsPIC has compared to the "normal" hobbyist PICs.

> > Although there are a few DIP parts, most of the models
> > are only available in difficult (for a hobbyist) packages.
> 
> Many are, but that's one reason I recommended the 30F3013.  It is available
> in hobbyist friendly 28 pin DIP, just like the 16F876 and 18F252.

DIP isn't much of an issue to worry about with the dsPIC unless you want
something with more the 40 pins, and that's always been the case with
PICs (has there every been a PIC available in DIP package with more then
40 pins). All dsPIC models 4xxx and below are available in DIP versions.

TTYL

-----------------------------
Herbert's PIC Stuff:
http://repatch.dyndns.org:8383/pic_stuff/

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