25 Nov
2009
25 Nov
'09
2:55 p.m.
On Nov 25, 2009, at 5:46 PM, Ethan Dicks wrote:
It's not that I never work with microcontrollers.
I have built
several AVR-based devices and am building an 8051-family device.
Those items require flexibility far beyond clocking a bunch of ROM
reads. They have to interpret command streams from larger processors
and have complex behavior (well over "here's your next byte"). They
need a microcontroller. I'm not sold on the design-time/construction
tradeoff for a peripheral for a VT78 - the market for that is small
enough I could probably hold all the devices in one hand - not worth
putting large amounts of effort into designing something completely
new.
Pick your battles and your toys. Sometimes, a 555 LED flasher is
easier and cheaper than a microcontroller even though you can do it
either way.
I dunno, I can throw some firmware together in C and blow it into
an 8751 (and get that 8751 running on a piece of perfboard) a lot
faster than I can wire up a dozen or two TTL chips. ;)
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL