Looking for a 2 dollar uart

PIC16F627A, I'd guess. $2.75 x1 and $1.57 x25, at digikey.

Or, if you can lose some of the pins on the max3100, like the /rts, /cts, /shdn, and /cs, you *might* be able to get away with a $1.68 x1 and $1.03 x25 price for the PIC12F629.

PIC12F629 _________ 1-|Vcc GND|-8 | | 2-|DIN DOUT|-7 | | 3-|SCLK /IRQ|-6 | | 4-|Rx Tx|-5 ---------

No idea what you care about there, though.

Jon

PIC12C508 or 12F629 if you want flash and/or interrupts. - should be below $1.50 in quantities more than a few. PIC will probably be more flexible than a CPLD, and it may be able to take away some processing from the main CPU, e.g. fifo buffering.

Hi

The Philips P87LPC760 14 pin micro with on-board UART hardware and +-2.5% tolerence RC osc (suitable for some speeds).

Might do the trick

the P87LPC760 is a simple verison of the 80c51 core.

Very cheep - should come close to ~$2. in volume

Just a thought

JG

An MSP430 would be smaller, cheaper and take less power. Only 3.3 V, though.

Leon

Try

Claims 99c/10K - and you get UART i2c HW support ( so meets your serial interface) and 256 Bytes of RAM allow large buffers. just ignore the 'spare resource' :) ( PCA, analog comparitor, and 1500 bytes of code space)

-jg

Thanks for all the $2 uart suggestions. I think that I'll work on the MSP430 approach.

Le>

I'd think an 8-pin would probably be a bit cheaper.

Hi Jim,

Well, the UART won't fit in a $2 CPLD. The UART cores we were looking at would fit in a 144 macrocell CPLD (CoolRunner if I'm not mistaken). I think the UART was about 124 macrocells by itself.

Elroy

The National Semi stuff (16552) should be priced in that ballpark at moderate volume (I can get em for ~2.75 in singles), a PIC is good too, but requires someone to program it - amortize that.

Andrew

Elroy the Seedy Impaler wrote:

On Fri, 27 Jun 2003 16:38:27 -0700, Jim Stewart wrote: >I've been looking for a cheap uart for serial >console/code uploading. I don't need much, >56k baud, serial or parallel interface. Don't >suggest MAX3100, it's a decent part but it's >a little too expensive and I'm tired of playing >with Maxim if you know what I mean. >

Current CPLD technology is not UART optimal, unless you need a special case. eg we did a design that needed many cascaded, TX only, fixed Baud, and for that CPLD was ideal.

Better would be

-jg