> Oh, it's not THAT awful.  Maybe.  I certainly don't see a reason to
> not look at their literature;

main reason: time. must read up on SAM7 too.

> I haven't seen any negative impact from
> giving them (or ARM, where you'll need to sign up again to see the
> ARM manuals) my information.

I want to sell chips, many to hobbyists/small-scale-professionals.
Havaning to sign up will not encourage potential customers.

> It's one more set of power pins than the usual 28pin PIC, plus
> a Vcpu (from an onboard regulator) that needs an external bypass
> cap.  

ARMs all seem to have a lot of power pins. That does not hurt much on
the higher pincount packages, but it is a waste on 28 an lower.

> They have a workaround for the JTAG issue (consists of having
> your software have a way of turning the pins back into JTAG) that
> isn't TOO awful.  (Just don't do it wrong.)

Anything that can be done wrong in software will be (at least by
someone..)

> The biggest issues I'm having doing anything with it are more
> philosophical.  Since the "cortex" is a thumb-only implementation
> of ARM7 with is a subset of ARM9, there doesn't seem to be any
> "bottom-up" documentation (since you already do ARMs, you'll have
> less problem with this.)  And while encouraging programming in C
> is nice, I could do with more documentation of the actual hardware
> instead of "oh just use our C library; here's the 400page document
> that tells you how to use it."  Their 48 pin chips look more
> promising (but less hobbyist-friendly.)

There are plenty good 48 pin SMD ARMs. A hobbyist friendly DIP ARM would
be a breakthrough.

> It's a good example of what I meant when I said Microchip understands
> the "low end" of microcontrollers.  It reminds me of when Atmel copied
> the 8pin PICs but didn't implement an internal oscillator or reset.
> "It's got three I/Os!  What did you expect from an 8pin chip?"  Heh.
> I expected what Microchip managed to do!

Agreed.

> (Hmm.  If I had to pick a vendor for "cluefullness" as shown by the
> products they're coming out with now, I think I'd go with TI.  The
> MSP430 group keeps doing things that cause me to go "that was a good
> idea!  Clever!")

Maybe I'll have to look into that line too. Anyone got some 9-day weeks
idling in their dustbins?

Wouter van Ooijen

-- -------------------------------------------
Van Ooijen Technische Informatica: www.voti.nl
consultancy, development, PICmicro products
docent Hogeschool van Utrecht: www.voti.nl/hvu
 

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