remember the max038?

I agree , they are forcing us to ARM mcu's

BUT gotta use more circuitry . --------------------- I love the 038 , but now we must do it all

with a ARM mcu , using DDS .

Its a ROM , that is read into a DAC .

It will do very hi freq .

An old 4MB PCI Video Card is a way

to make waveforms . Its DAC is very hi speed .

BTW Im doin ARM mcu . Ill be writting s/w and a new Loader . Ill make it much easier to debug . I have many ARM EVB's and Game-boxes to hack the ARM mcu's inside .

The most exciting is the $150 Nintendo DS Lite

it has 2 ARMs , 2 LCD color , 2 ports ...

I just bought a hack tool called a M3-Simply to load homebrew s/w to the DS lite .

Next i'll hook a 2.5" HDD to slot-2 . Its easy , no glue , only wires and a free s/w , from WWW .

Actually, some of us remember the Intersil 8038 that came out in the early seventies, and had something like a 1MHz upper limit. That's a long time ago.

The Maxim version just added to that, the upper frequency limit and the lifespan of the basic concept.

Michael

You can order small quantities for $19.90 US here:

Roger

Yes, but a DDS normally lets you monkey around with phase and amplitude shifts in "real time" (i.e., it has a phase offset adder and an output multiplier), whereas doing this with a video card would require that *you* provide the hardware or software to do so. For completely fixed waveforms, I would agree that a video card can make a fine device if you already have a PC lying around anyway to drive it.

If you don't like monolithic DDS ICs, a better approach is to just "roll our own" inside of an FPGA along with a discrete DAC. You won't get the speed as the fastest DDS ICs available, but it may still be fast enough for your needs.