microcontrollers in DIP or "breadboardable" form-factor

Oh, those are nice. Cheap and flexible, I might order some, thanks for the link. The thing with the Rpi ready-made cable is you just plug it once at both ends, instead of 40 separate wires to plug and tangle.

Back to DIP form-factor boards, I should have listed the Adafruit Feather series, which is growing rather rapidly:

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They are available with DIP pins though they're 0.9 inches wide, which means there are only a few plugboard holes reachable outside them (it might also be possible to use some of the ones underneath. I remember way back, those plugboard were also available with a 0.6" channel in the middle instead of 0.3", for the wide 40 pin DIP microprocessors of the era. I don't know if many of those packages are used any more.

Reply to
Paul Rubin
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Hardly. On the socket board you have to then wire each and every one of the pins you use to another point on the board unless you can somehow get the circuit to map to your I/O pins.

That's what I like about the single row cables. They can be split up and tied directly to the points in your circuit where you need them.

At 0.9 inches wide that only leaves one row of pins accessible on each side. That is why I don't plug MCU boards into the socket board. It gets to be rather pointless.

I still have a single board computer that uses the TMS9900 CPU chip in a

64 pin, 0.9 inch wide package. A bear to prototype on a socket board, but this is a large PCB, some 18 inches across. I got it second hand along with a switching power supply from who knows what equipment that weighed 10 pounds if it weighed an ounce. It did work although I never did much with it. Programming EPROMs is such a PITA. It was mostly a learning tool... I learned not to play with 64 pin, 0.9 inch wide DIPs. I rolled my own board with the more conventional 40 pin TMS9995.
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Rick
Reply to
rickman

The other approach is to use breakout boards, e.g. the ones from Bellin Dynamic Systems (sold by Mouser).

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They convert from various SMT packages to a DIP pattern, and work fine at low to moderate speed (< 100 MHz, say).

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
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Reply to
Phil Hobbs

It's silly to use any of the above with MCUs. Unless you are building a production run, why not just buy an MCU board and connect your circuit to it? MCU boards often have a debugger interface and a reset button and other important features you won't have to bother with. There is little need to reinvent the wheel for every project.

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Rick
Reply to
rickman

You might buy an MCU board with pins, plug it into your breadboard, and then find there's a peripheral chip you want to use that's only available in SMT. So you want a breakout adapter for THAT.

Reply to
Paul Rubin

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