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Good startup microcontroller devel kits

If PIC32 where up-to-date technology... In reality the MIPS4k architecture is old and never caught on well. It isn't well supported by the community either so you are on your own (been there, done that). If you want a proper compiler you have to pay Microchip for an upgraded GCC compiler which you could have for free if you had choosen for ARM. Newer ARM Cortex M4 devices come with a hardware FPU closing the gap between SoCs and microcontrollers. In other words, if you choose ARM there is an extremely wide range of controllers you can choose from (from micropower to real horsepower) while having to learn about only one architecture.

Microchip put their money on the wrong horse. They try to compete on price, not quality. That also shows in the enormous amounts of severe bugs in the silicon:

I picked two similar devices:

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Note that the PIC32 has twice the amount of bugs. Most where not fixed in the next silicon revision.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
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Reply to
Nico Coesel
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Getting something up and running on a small CPU is a lot faster than doing the same on ARM. There's an awful lot of reading through all those docs to find the right config bit to do what you want. Like most things, once you get good at it and have a code base to work from, it isn't as bad, but for smaller jobs, AVRs and PICs are short, sweet, and to the point.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

wrote:

grows bigger

where to

compliers is

good

go straight to PCB. It's a specific example in our case, but not uncommon issue.

Hand soldering QFN is no problem if you have the pads extend a little bit (say .6mm) beyond the package.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to
Nico Coesel

bigger than =

store th=

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I seldom need to have the latest and greatest GCC. PIC32 CC is based on gcc 3.4 or something, which is good enough for my use.

They also come in bigger packages, probably due to bigger die size.

Most of the bugs are I/O related regardless of CPU arch. I do not see major show stopper either.

Reply to
linnix

10

MicrochipDirect) =20

pretty =20

Nonsense. It was common in the old 68020 era; 64 pin dip at 40 MHz.

?-)

Reply to
josephkk

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