14 May
2004
14 May
'04
2:53 p.m.
At 10:29 AM 5/14/2004 -0700, you wrote:
derivative,
Ouch! I think I payed $6.281 each for my tray of 60 parts, which I consider
a pretty good price for what it does.
> > >
I'm curious what everyone thinks of this issue, and what *are* the
> > > better choices?
> >
> > The Motorola 68EC000 makes a reasonable microcontroller. 16 MB
addressing
> > range, configurable 8- or 16-bit data
bus, a range of operating speeds
>(far
> > faster than a 6809), freely available tools, still in full production,
and
> > about $4.00 in single lots.
>
>I'm not finding those. Where are you seeing/getting them? Closest that
I
found were
some other 68Ks that were in the $8-$10 range.
I've been using the MC68VZ328PV in my designs of late. It is a 68k has a nice set of I/O, and is cheap. I did have
problems locating a source
for single quantities, so I just bought a tray of 60... They are TQFP 144,
so
they don't have the problems that a BGA
package does for prototype work.
The
MC68EZ328 is another version which is slightly
slower and has less I/O.
The
GCC compiler tools work well with these as they
are 68k based.
I found those at $28 each (qty 1), but that seems pretty high for a
microcontroller. That's at least half the parts budget, for most of the
projects I am thinking of. So I still have the "where" question :-). TQFP-144...I guess I could figure out how to attach
that to my homemade
PCB...something tells me you have way nicer tools than I do.
I run Cadsoft Eagle and I've used the part on a two layer board. The Eagle
tools work pretty well and they have 3 levels, including a free set that
limits you to a smaller board and fewer layers. Over the years, I eventually
upgraded to the professional version so that I could do any size board that
I want. I did not purchase the autorouter -- I think humans are better at
it.
--tom