I was wondering why there are so few threads about the Freescale MCUs. They don't seem to be very popular, or am I wrong? I'm about to embark on a small embedded project, based on a Freescale HC08GB60 (a timer with a couple of bells and whistles) and because threads quite often deal with issues about PICs, 8051s and other small 8-bitters, a little doubt has crept up whether Freescale is the right choice. Can it be the price? Then perhaps the features that a particular Freescale MCU offers? The hardware support? Development software? Comments, please...
I think they are more popular than people realize. I think that Motorola or Freescale haven't been doing a lot of advertising in magazines or such that I notice. Of course I haven't bought a lot of MCU types of magazines lately. But I am signed up for Freescale's email notification services. The last big promotion they did a couple of years ago was the huge
68HC908QT4 giveaway EVAL board promotion, which was pretty neat. The 68HC908QT4 piqued my interest as it is a small 8 pin MCU with an ADC and UART built in, and 4k of Flash. I still think they have the only 8 pin MCU with a ADC built in. I think most users of these chips are getting support for them elsewhere. The 68HC908xxxx series chips are so similar to HC11's that I think most people get support through other sources that cater to the HC11's.
I am a big fan of the DSP56F800 series myself. So if I have a question or problem I get my support through
formatting link
Several of these chips are perfect for motion control, CNC, robotics applications. They have something like six PWM channels, three or four quad timers, built in quadrature decoders, ADC's, etc. Several other chips are excellent for different kinds of DSP applications as well. These are 16 bit processors that run at up to 80 mhz clock speed. Some new chips run up to 120mhz clock. The tools that are available aren't as good as some other chips, but they have a nice selection to choose from. Peter Gray has the Small C compiler
formatting link
for these chips.
formatting link
has tremendous support for their boards using these chips, plus they have the ISOMAX system and MAXForth (for other chips as well), plus a nice assember too.
formatting link
has a nice Forth compiler (for just about all the different MCU's) too.
formatting link
has the Codewarrior C++ compiler.
For your chips
formatting link
has an excellent C compiler that works well. I used it with the little tiny 68HC908xxxx chips myself. Plus
formatting link
has a Codewarrior version that works well too. Freescale through Metrowerks offers a free 4k or 8k limited compiler for these chips depending on which chip your using. I think it is 4k limited for the
68HC908QT4 (et cetera) types of MCU's and 8k for the DSP56F800 series. But it could have changed recently. I think one could modify or get a version of the GnuCC compiler for these as well.
Yes, you are wrong, Mot/Freescale is one of the biggest suppliers of microcontrollers. The reason there are so few threads about these is that everything about them is so very well documented that people just don't have any problems to discuss about these wonderful semiconductors.
because Motorola/Freescale seems to prefer big customers (e.g. automotive), with direct support etc. and those rarely write in newsgroups.
The devices are not so simple to get in small quantities, there are no "free" and good tools. You need to spend some money to have fun (e.g. for a BDM interface).
[...]
IMHO the performance/price ratio is similar to other uCs.
And the BDM interface is great (non-intrusive access to memory while target is running).
they have own (non public) groups in Yahoo not listed in the public Yahoo directory. E.g. groups.yahoo.com/group/68hc05_08/ and they recently started a new and own community page at
formatting link
Further everybode can sign at the freescale webpage for registration and mail to the freescale product specialists worldwide.
Last weeks they introduced the new feature to order sample quantities at the webpage for free ...
"Al Borowski" skrev i meddelandet news:419951e4$0$25778$ snipped-for-privacy@per-qv1-newsreader-01.iinet.net.au...
formatting link
Think the ATtiny13 and ATtiny15 (and soon t25/t45/t85) should fit that description nicely as well.
--
Best Regards
Ulf at atmel dot com
These comments are intended to be my own opinion and they
may, or may not be shared by my employer, Atmel Sweden.
> cheers,
>
> Al
>
There are active mailing lists for the 32-bit microcontrollers - I don't know about the small ones. We've also had lots of information from our distributers.
For the smaller devices, the CodeWarrior tools are (as far as I know) free or cheap for limited sizes of program code, though they are expensive for the unlimited versions. BDM interfaces should be reasonably priced. For larger devices (i.e., 32-bit chips), there are gnu tools, cheap BDMs, and open-source OS'es. I can't comment much on the availability of small quantities, however.
...and a heckuva lot more in a package twice the size of a PIC10...
I've sorta given up on Cygnal/SiLabs. They look like fun chips to work with, and quite powerful, but every time I had Purchasing quote one of their controllers, it came out 2x the next worst competitor. Digikey's price for a single C8051F300 is over US$6.50, and about US$3.60 for 1500.
And I don't need all that much power for the app I had in mind. The PIC10 is less than US$0.50 in quantity (Digikey's price for a single is about US$1). Anything less than a buck (with an 8-bit ADC) would have made it worthwhile.
You forgot the ";-)" didn't you? Only able to talk about 68HC12 here, but the documentation to that part is about the worst piece of tech write I've ever seen. If you want unclear, obfuscating, verbose and chaotically organized docs, then go for Motorola. I don't dispute the status quo of documentation of other, marginal microcontroller vendors, but big big Motorola should be able to afford at least some input from a competent tech editor when producing another 400 page handbook for their mcu's.
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.