On Sep 22, 2006, at 12:45 PM, Don Bowen wrote:

> I am looking at the PIC is some projects I have in mind.

[EE] tag added.  You've come to the right place.

> First my background.  I worked in embedded development from the
> late 70s to just a few years ago, along the line building projects
> around the 6800, 6802, 6502, 8085, 8048, 8051, 8086, 80186, 80286,
> 80386EX, 68000, 68020, TMS320C30, TMS32C25, i860, i960, and several
> others I have forgotten using assembly, PL/M, C, C++, Ada, Forth,
> etc in projects ranging from OCR, keyboards, base wide alarms,
> pilotless drones, rubber mirrors, satellite modems, satellite
> passengers, and others.

Impressive list!  (how does a rubber mirror use a micro?)

>
> I am now retired from all that and have a couple of projects in
> mind.  Currently I am deciding between the PIC and some 8051 Variant.

Is that choice fixed?  Other alternatives would include the Atmel
AVR, or with your background in larger microprocessors, some ARM
chip.

> What would be a good start up lab?  I would need a C cross compiler,
> downloader, and programmer.  An important factor is cheap, I am
> retired but no pension for me, strictly savings.
>
I think the AVR is currently leading when it comes to low-cost
development tools.  Their "Butterfly" and (new) "Dragon" development
tools are far beyond most vendors when it comes to value.  For the
PIC, the PicKit1, picKit2, and ICD2 are all reasonably priced semi-pro
development systems.  Both the PIC and AVR also have numerous
hobbyist-level development tools you can build yourself for even less,
plus third-party tools that have also stayed competitively priced (and
in a bewildering ranges of "professionalism")  Both have numerous
C compilers, many with free reduced-capability evaluation versions.
See the archives and/or www.piclist.com for more info.

I find the 8051 landscape to be ... crowded.  Sort of the opposite
problem from single-sourced parts; there are SO many varieties with
SO many different development environments  that it's hard to pick
a vendor, much less a particular chip.  There's a similar issue with
ARM chips, I guess...

I did recently bought a ramtron VersaKit-30xx development system for
their new 51L3074 (64k flash, 4.25k RAM, 8K FRAM!, 40 mips, 2
uarts...), which seems interesting, and it's on sale, and there's
a contest...  (I always figured I'd try to fund post-retirement
experiments by entering design contests; I've talked to vendor
reps - often there are very few entries so chances of winning
something are pretty good.  And writing, maybe.)

BillW
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