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Newbie seeks help with microcontroller and electronics

I want to use a microcontroller for several projects that will basically need to accept commands from a PC and drive stepper motors based on those commands. I've played around with AVRStudio from ATMEL, and based on the simulator that it provides, I think I can handle the software side of it without a problem, but I need some hardware help.

Here's what I was thinking about:

For the microcontroller either a ATMEL with the STK500, or a PIC with ??? to program it?, or the Zilog Z8 Encore development kit. Comments?

Also, what items would you recommend for someone on a tight budget to experiment around with? Can you think of a handful of chips, or components that I could get that would give me a good feel for putting circuits together and testing them? I just want to get a good assortment of goodies to play with and try to understand the basics before I move on.

thanks, art

Reply to
Art
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Don McKenzie  E-mail:    http://www.dontronics.com/e-mail.html
              Home Page: http://www.dontronics.com

USB to RS232 Converter that works http://www.dontronics.com/usb_232.html
The World's Largest Range of  Atmel/AVR & PICmicro Hardware and Software
Reply to
Don McKenzie

Maybe it's too late now, but I offer a low cost ATmega128 based development board, either as bare pcb or a complete kit. I offer ATmega128 cpus or cpu kits as well. A tiny ATmega128 based module will come up soon. See

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for details. The schematics and layouts are also freely available for download (for self etching purposes).

Cheers, ER!K

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LINS Technologies
http://www.lins.de
Reply to
Erik Lins

Comments?

Take a look at the Z8 Encore Development kit (Z8F64200100KIT) for $39.95. There is a C compiler included with the kit. I think that the Z8ENCORE000ZCO has more stuff on it but the i/o is only 3.3V. The Z8F64200100KIT is 3.3V with 5V tolerant I/O. The new versions of the eZ8 are all going to be 3.3V with 5V tolerant I/O.

Zilog has a serveral example programs on the CD and web site. There is also a Yahoo user group

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that has some files and other help.

Bradley

Reply to
Bradley

As for PIC, I bought an ICD2 (simple debugger/programmer module) and the PICDEM2 board. The PICDEM2 came with a PIC16F877A and an PIC18F452. The PICDEM2 board comes with a buzzer, some push buttons, LEDs, temperature sensor, pot (for ADC), and a 2-line LCD. There are different size DIP sockets for other PICs.

Reply to
Gary Kato

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