You keep on
telling us that things are different between Brazil and the
States, and what is common in one place is not common in the other. Whcih
I happily accept. All I can say is that the UK is different again. Or at
least I've enver found any form of Pentium PC for free. The latest PC
that I've been given was a battered 386SX that, I have to admit, I took
apart for useful bits.
Strange. I **though** "old" PCs in UK were as cheap as water. But I
I clearly don;'t know the right people (or perhaps my friends wouldn't
insult me by offering me a PC, prefering to give me useful thinks like
bench multimetes :-)). I've never been offered such a macnine anyway...
still don't believe someone reading this won't
give you as a gift an old P3
or even a P4. If I were near you I'd surely do that.
Of coruse the otehr side ot this is 'Do I realy want a Pentium PC'. And
to be honest, I can't see that I do. I'm happy with the machine I've got...
It is my
bitter esperience that a lot of thsee parallel-port devices,
even those that have software that runs under MS-DOS, do not work
properly on a 4.77MHz PC/XT...
My keyboard runs faster than that... :oD
Define 'faster' :-) Comapring the speed of totally diiffernt processors by
comapring the clock input frequency of one (the 4.77MHz of my XT) with
the crystal freuqncy of the other (I asusme something like an 8MHz xtal)
is meaningless.
True, and contrary to some other people here, I
do like making my own
tools, whether they be mechancial tools, electronic tools (like test
equipment) or software tools. In fact _I_ am seriously looking at some of
the current microcotnrolelr families for use in projects. But this
doesn't mean everybody has to want to use them.
So they roll their own :)
Exactly. I roll my own. Which might inovlve soldering up a PCB of TTL
chips...
That is up to you. I have this notebook for some
years, and it just
works. Although I love to know my tools, I can use some I don't know the
internal workings.
I really do like to know what's going on, and be able to repair
everything. Call me eccentric if you like, but I am, not likely to change :-)
I have come across all of those microcontrollers
in my time. In fact I
was using something based on the 3870 (the HPIL-GPIO interface) and
reparing something containing a COP400 (HPIL knob input device -- in fact
jsut about all HP-HIL devices have COP400s in them) a couple of days ago.
HP does everything different :o)
Indeed :-). Which is one reason I find their machines so interesting.
Actually the COP400 turns up on the keyboard PCB of the Newbrain (a
somewhat odd UK home computer) too. And I can't remember which COP is
used in the keybaord of the FTS-88 system.
Actually, the 8048 family is getting soemwhat
hard to find now (AFAIL it
is no longer manufactured), and that one turns up _everywhere_.
Ok, this one you are right. But as far as I remember, MCS-51 devices are
pin-compatible. And since they don't have code protection, I can always
download the code of a good 8048 and use a 8748 to replace it. I did it many
I was counint the 8748 is the '8048 family'. The 8748/8749/8750 and the
ROMless 8035/8039/8040 are all getting hard to obtain now.
-tony