loosing hope

Sep 12, 2003 2 Replies

my sx key stopped working, the parallax programmer for Ubicom/Scenix's SX chip. it just wont generate a clock any more, which is odd, cause it will still debug. huh. was working when i left beginning of summer, get back and its all haywire. hopefully it'll get replaced.



whats scared me most is the price increase. i originally got the sx key for $60. now its $175 for a new one! highway robbery, i tell you!



i hate how badly the experimenter front of the microcontroller and embedded world is getting screwed. personally i'm finding it necessary to have to figure out some way to utilize BGA to advance beyond by humble SX chip roots. but development tools - even simple ones like my SX key - are becoming astronomically overpriced.



I am loosing hope Matt



Cygnal have quite a nice set of tools. Full JTAG Pgmr/Emulator and Eval Board and SW is typ $99, and you can replace portions of this.

Their Chips use much less power than Ubicoms, and they have DIP models of the F330, which is a reasonable SX superset.

-jg

I build most of my own development hardware. For the SX chips, I built the Fluffy2 programmer, which works very well and a simple prototyping PCB. Fluffy2 includes a download connector to the target board (haven't tried it yet, though). It would be nice to have debugging facilities like those offered by the SX Key, but they aren't essential.

Leon

Leon Heller, G1HSM leon_heller@hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/leon_heller

Join the Discussion

Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.

Didn't find your answer?

Ask the community — no account required