15 Feb
2010
15 Feb
'10
9:38 p.m.
On Feb 15, 2010, at 4:33 PM, Tony Duell wrote:
And yet only the other day people were telling me how cheap it was
to get
the development setup for CPLDs, FPGAs, microcontrollers, etc. You
can't
have it both ways :-)
Some of it *is* very cheap. And some of it is very expensive.
The entry-level stuff is very cheap.
In any case 'I have a board with the chip on'
is IMHO a ridiculous
reason
for picking a particular clase of device.
Development hardware tends to be very expensive, and familiarity
is important. Taking an ultra-purist attitude, I'd agree with your
assertion, but practical matters do come into play sometimes. More seriously, the setup for microcontrollers should
be pretty
simple.
Most of the modern ones seem to have an in-system-programming
interface,
normally similar to SPI. That can be bit-banged over the lines of a
parallel port.
Hmm. No machines with parallel ports here, except for classic
ones. I suppose I could use a 5150..
The software is free if you have somethign to run it
on
(and I suspect any machien capable of running FPGA development
software
can run microocntroller development software too), or in the case of
microcontrollers yoy can write your own.
Preachin' to the choir here..
As regards the actual hardware. as I said, you can
hand-wire the
microcontroller, clock crystal, HPIB buffers, etc on a bit of
square-pad
board in an hour or so.
Very true. It seems that many people think development boards are
"ready made microcontroller boards". I can't tell you how many
development boards I've seen mounted in permanent, application-
specific chassis. That kind of idiocy makes me ill.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL