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Re: Another New Hardware Thought
Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
On 2007-05-05, Roger Johnstone <roger@roger.geek.nz.removethisbit> wrote:
Forget PCs. If you want a simple 8-bit computer system that's still
being actively developed and sold buy a microcontroller developer kit.
Some of the kits are available for very low prices, the documentation is
generally excellent and freely downloadable, and for many there are free
BASIC and C compilers available. If you program it in assembly you'll
even have the advantage of getting to know what every memory bit and
processor cycle is doing :o)
What's a good source for them?
I've not found any trainer boards or SBCs that were not kind of
expensive.
Also, it is a lot more interesting if it is a machine that you can do
real work with.
Of course, eventually you could create that with your own system, but it
is nice to work on a system many others work with.
I've been thinking it would be nice to build a simple computer using
32-bit MIPS CPUs. Nice instruction set, not very expensive, and you
could probably build a simple system that was still fast enough to do a
decent amount of work.
Just a thought.
There are a slew of microcontroller development boards, usually in the
$50-$150 range, with included development tools (compilers, libraries,
debuggers, etc.)
The available architectures cover a wide range of 8-, 16-, and 32-bit
processors, from PICs to ARMs. DSP and FPGA development and evaluation
kits are also widely available, most for very reasonable prices.
If you like the MIPS architecture--or the 6502--take a look at ARM.
Coridium Corp (www.coridiumcorp.com) had a very affordable ARMmite
board for $49, for example.
The chip manufacturers regularly have "specials" on development boards
and kits. The most recent wave tends to plug into a USB port.
-michael
NadaNet file server for Apple II computers!
Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/
"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."