Know of a cheaper evaluation/development/starter kit for a microprocessor? Available in Australia.
- posted
15 years ago
Know of a cheaper evaluation/development/starter kit for a microprocessor? Available in Australia.
for a PIC? For a PIC32 specifically? USB powered or other?
Cheers Don...
-- Don McKenzie Site Map: http://www.dontronics.com/sitemap
Same price for something better (IMO), available from an Australian supplier:
Dave.
No credit card facility. Although Farnell takes money orders.
$80 seems a good buy, when you get a suite of software including a 'C' compiler. Though I wonder at the output capacity of this product, lcd, registers on screen, diodes?
Do modtronix.com take orders other than credit cards?
Harvard architecture is a difficult programming exercise in assembler, but quite accessible in 'C' language which is provided by the PIC 32 starter kit.
Was looking for a microcontroller based on the Z80. CISC is much nicer to code with.
The Z180 microcontroller development board. Too expensive and probably not available in Australia.
Why anyone would want to code in assembler these days is beyond me. C has so many more benefits on multiple levels. You should only code in assembler when required, e.g. small/fast/critical routines. Most micros have decent free C compilers available, suitable for all but the most demanding apps.
C makes the architecture choice almost irrelevant for most apps.
Dave.
speed. reliability.
Depends. There are many excellent C compilers that produce superbly fast and tight assembler code. Just because it's in assembler doesn't automatically mean it's faster. A good C compiler will produce faster code than poorly written assembler any day.
Properly tested C code has the same reliability as properly tested assembler code. Poorly tested assembler is not reliable, just as poorly tested C code is not reliable.
Of course, we won't even mention the many benefits of C over assembler.
Dave.
what? only if you're doing self modifying code it is!
I found AVR (Harvard) no more difficult that Z80 (Von Neumann) to program in assembler.
after 1000 lines of avr assembler (a few years ago) and about same amount of Z80 (when I was a kid) I prefer AVR.
It's just the PIC instruction set that tastes bad.
have a look at AVR, it's as nice as, if not nicer than, Z80 it matches most feature (with the exception of the ldir,lddr,otir (etc) op-codes which are easily replaced with a loop) the ATmega versions get you a hardare 8x8bit multipier which can help sometimes.
Bye. Jasen
Only in the hands of someone with some knowledge of assembler.
If you only know C you can it's too easy to make bad choices.
eg: multiplying is faster than dividing so multiplying by 0.5 is faster than dividing by 2
Bye. Jasen
Not a good example, a divide by two with ints is a simple single instruction shift right, can't get any quicker than that.
But generally if talking about floats with a real FP core, yes multiplies are quicker.
But using FP in micros is foolish in most instances due to the processing overhead for a questionable gain.
If you can use ints, use them, performance will rise dramatically.
Ray
shift right, can't get any quicker
quicker.
it was an example pitfall 0.5 is a float so the C program will convert my interger to a float multiply it by 0.5 (another float) and then convert the result it back to an integer. although someone who knows C would know that... point conceded. they may also know that the compiler will translate a division by literal 2 into a shift, instead of calling the integer divide function.
overhead for a questionable gain.
yeah, unless there's no hurry floats are a bad idea.
and if you use chars instead of ints you win a little more too as long as your numbers fit in 8 bits.
Bye. Jasen
For vey small projects the overhead is too great, the space it takes up may exceed the space required for the actual code.
messagenews: snipped-for-privacy@i24g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
Sure, there will always be specific circumstances where you need to go assembly for small apps where every byte counts, but for most general apps you don't.
I've done many useful PIC C projects with under 2KB of program memory.
Dave.
"The Z180 microcontroller development board. Too expensive and probably not available in Australia. "
Rabbit microcontrollers are z80 compat.. Interesting to see how much this costs.
Odd to have z80s running at 50mhz. Remember the old 8bit cpus in many chintzy microcomputers operating at 4mhz clock speed.
Liked the old Dick Smith, VZ300 though. Came with an assembler on casette tape.
Enjoyed, reading the 'Programming the Z80' book by Zacs(?).
"Enjoyed, reading the 'Programming the Z80' book by Zacs(?). "
Rodney Zaks:
It has been a while (too long a while) but wasn't it rodnAy zacs?? an A not E
Mik
=8-)
Pigs that fly in the sky so very high.
7:9:30
7 * 60 * 60 + 9 * 60 + 30 =3D 25770
25770 / 2008 =3D 12.83366534(12.83366534 - 12) * 2008 =3D 1674
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