Your opinions please on possible 89LPC901FN programmer product

In article , Gary Peek writes

Yes but... the Keil comes with the 4K limited compiler suite. Monitors etc lots of app notes and support. It also has full circuit diagrams.

The problem is that the Keil kit is done as a loss leader....It is practically impossible to compete with it commercially. This is good in that a pro kit is available at a budget price but it also kills the competition which is a pity.

The other problem is getting the chips. There is a problem that many silicon distributors have high MOQ's and single parts from Maplin etc are not cheap. The cost of a board and parts could cost more than kits like the Keil where parts are bought in bulk.

Silicon companies are doing this not only with dev kits but tools as well. This is having a similar effect on the low end tools vendors. It is getting to the stage where you can only do this sort of thing if you are already a big player of a specialised niche market.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ \/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills Staffs England /\/\/\/\/\ /\/\/ snipped-for-privacy@phaedsys.org

Perhaps you should do a P89LPC932 board as the biggest family member in the LPC900 series , of which the LPC901 is a sub-set of features... Keil have this for $59 USD with limited complier etc.

Can you compete with that!

JG

Schematic and sample code included of course. We are assuming assembly language since the 901 only has 1K of user program memory, and a free assembler is available, ASEM51 by Heinz (see our web site for a link).

Good point and I understand this, that is why we have also considered including _extra chips_ or even _another PCB and chip_ so that the user could program their chip on the programming/prototyping board, test it in the prototyping section of this board, and then build it on the extra board.

Again, comments welcome about this approach.

Why would we do this? Well, we think the Philips 901 is a pretty neat chip, having the 8051 core, more or less.

All of this assumes very simple projects on a budget or learning about micros. Otherwise, there are things much better than an 8 pin micro in a DIP package.

Hello Gary,

there is a programming adapter from Philips that plugs into the Keil MCB900 board. They whole system, board + adapter is less than $100 ($98). There is however a need for small quantities LPC901s that are hard to get by through distributors.

May be if enough people request this from Digikey, they would start to stock these nice little devices.

My opinion, your time and money would not be well spent doing a dedicated programmer for the LPC901 but a great application example would be to sell the 901 as a real-time clock replacement. Clocking the RTC-block with 32 kHz external and using the 1k to provide time-of-day functionaility. Communication to a host devices could be done through bit-banging, switching the internal frequency to 7.373 MHz while the RTC continues to run from 32 kHz.

What would you think about that?

Cheers, Schwob

In article , Gary Peek writes

Ho... it is a 932 (and soon apparently a 935) with 8-K of space and a 4K C compiler.

Good idea except, as i discovered today for 39 USD you can get a 90* progammer board that is and add on to the Keil MCB900.....

It is on the Philips web site.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ \/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills Staffs England /\/\/\/\/\ /\/\/ snipped-for-privacy@phaedsys.org

Oops, can't say that I know what they are, although I heard Philips was coming out with some others. (I was hoping for one with an A/D, not just analog comparator.)

So far we have only done 901FN.

Yep, if you already had a Keil board that would be the thing to do.

All of these tools I see seem to try to be everything to everyone instead of just being plain simple when simple will do (assuming you select one chip to work with.)

Of course Philips has made so many variations...