On Feb 26, 2008, at 6:14 PM, woodelf wrote:
Well, Chuck
said it best, but I'll add this: You get fewer
components, lower cost, easier maintainability and tweakability,
increased flexibility, the possibility for a reusable design...how
is this a bad thing?
I question the over head ... with all the design software closed
source
I bet Mr Gates has control of I guess 75% of your hardware product.
Huh?? No, nothing could be further from the truth. This is a
widely-believed myth that I want to put to bed *right now*. If you
choose a microcontroller and a compiler system that locks you into
BillyWare (or any other single vendor for that matter!), you've
chosen poorly.
I only use one microcontroller for which the compiler toolchain is
proprietary (ironically it's an extended Z80)...EVERYTHING else I run
is free. I regularly develop for (non-extended) Z80, at least four
different modern mcs51 variants, ARM7, and PIC architectures, and I
compiled every tool I use from source code. It's free software every
step of the way, including editing the source code, compilation,
linking, chip programming, debugging...everything. Soon I'll be
adding MSP430 and ARM9 to that list, and the most commonly used
development tools for those platforms are free (including source
code) also.
Further, there's no Windows involved anywhere (I don't have the
patience for it)...I usually run under Solaris on UltraSPARC, but
sometimes I develop (using the exact same tools!) under OS X. Hooray
for modern operating systems.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL