Microchip enhances its PIC MCUs with new mid-range 8-bit Core

[HATHA]

hi all
microchips new arrivel of 8-bit cores seem to be support C - it has 14kb flash memory and many more
**broken link removed**

 

[Noggin]

Hope they put more than 1 working register into those.

 

[MrAl]

Hi,

Without searching, i am wondering if they made an enhanced version of
the smaller chips, like the 12F7675 and the like.

 

[HarveyH42]

Hope they put more than 1 working register into those.

Atmel AVR chips have 32 working registers

 

[Noggin]

Yes, I know. That's why I'm dumbfounded by why people would use a lower end PIC instead of an AVR for anything. C may sort of hide the fact that (many of) the PIC only has one working register, but it can't hide it when you put a scope on it and wonder why you're getting about a quarter of the MIPS out of it that you expected.

I forgot to duplicate my complaints about bank switching....

In any case, I do really like the higher end PICs. The PIC24 and PIC32 are awesome bargains for the price.

 

[3v0]

Anyone who wants to use an AVR, Freescale, or Zilog chip please do so.

But none of what you are objecting to amounts to a hill of beans. They are old tired arguments that have been hashed over many times.

People use PICs becaue they are inexpensive and come with a wide mix of peripherals. On this forum you can get much better help for PIC then AVR. Many times we end up sending AVR questions to ARVFREEKS.

3v0

 

[blueroomelectronics]

Personally I wouldn't recommend the original 14bit cores anymore. The 16bit (18F) parts are much nicer to work with.

That said the tiny 10F & 12F parts are still lots of fun and super cheap.

I'm working with a 24HJ12GP201 right now. Puddles of fun with the really really flexible PLL (has hundreds of possible combinations) and an 18pin DIP is available.

Bonus the same cheap PICkit2 (of course I'm using my Junebug ) can program and debug most PICs.

 

[DirtyLude]

Anyone who wants to use an AVR, Freescale, or Zilog chip please do so.

Woot! Woot! Honourable mention.
So sadly forgotten Zilog.

 

[3v0]

Woot! Woot! Honourable mention.
So sadly forgotten Zilog.

I loved Zilog chips back in the day of the Z80 and Z8.

The Z8 with a simple masked basic interpreter was the first stamp like uC. It still needed a 2Kx8 static RAM to function, but I could live with a 2 chip solution rather then a naked processor and every peripheral on a separate chip.

3v0

Nitpickers:
I did not forget about the 1488 and 1489. So call it 4.

 

[HarveyH42]

Sorry, couldn't resist it this time, when I saw mention of registers... Compilers, libraries, and different languages, make these sorts of chip wars kind of silly. Shouldn't have stirred the pot.

 

[Triode]

How come I don't hear much mention of the paralax propeller chips? I don't use them, but the people who work with MCUs at my university seem to love them. Aparently they're easy to use with a TV and they have multiple cores ("cogs") and they use them instead of interrupts since they can run simultaniously. I haven't used them so I don't know how that works.

anyway, cool news about the new chip features, I'll have to read up on that.

 

[blueroomelectronics]

The propellers are weird one off chips from Parallax.
Not sure where they fit in, if you want a simple controller most choose a bog standard AVR or PIC, if you want speed go with an ARM or MIPs.

 

[DirtyLude]

How come I don't hear much mention of the paralax propeller chips? I don't use them, but the people who work with MCUs at my university seem to love them. Aparently they're easy to use with a TV and they have multiple cores ("cogs") and they use them instead of interrupts since they can run simultaniously. I haven't used them so I don't know how that works.

anyway, cool news about the new chip features, I'll have to read up on that.

Everything I've seen about them is that they tend to be more of an experimenters chip. The best things I've seen with them are some nice video processing demo's. They do have some really nice features, but practically there's not a lot of use for those features.

 

[Triode]

I think the grad students mainly like them because they have lots of sample code that lets you connect them to monitors, and a lot of them are working with different kinds of scanning technology where video screen output is very usefull. Or it could just be that its the first thing they found that worked. With groups that are just trying to get something done and want the electronics out of the way the chip of chioce is often just the first one they found out how to use.