Hello,
I've done some PIC development before, with the PIC16F690, PIC18F4321, etc. and I'm thinking about trying out the Atmel processors since I've heard they have a flat memory space (no banks), a software stack, and other things I am interested in. What would be a good entry level atmel microprocessor to experiment with (maybe having features like USART, SPI, USB, external data/program memory) and what kind of programmer is available? This would all be for hobby stuff, so I'm looking for the equivalent to the PICKit 2 system and the mplabide stuff. If the development and programmer software worked reliably under linux, I'd be very happy as well.
I know gcc has an avr backend and somewhere there is available an avr-libc. While I'll probably write in assembly for a while to learn the processor, I'd eventually move over to C if I feel I know the instruction set well enough.
Any advice on where to get started? Can I get free samples of atmel processors as easily as the PIC processors?
Thanks.
-pete