In article ,
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Another great idea thanks.Lots to choice from NEC. Why don't US companies
make prescalers?
I think On Semiconductor (formerly Motorola) might be your only choice
there; not sure they're still in the business. There's also California
Eastern Labs (www.cel.com), but they may just be reselling NEC parts.
Not super-familiar with the prescaler world these days.
Where do I get this free C/C++ compiler and which Atmel chips do you
recommend to start?
Atmel partisans tend to favor the "WinAVR" distribution of avr-gcc (
http://www.avrfreaks.net/AVRGCC/ , or just Google for avr-gcc or winavr
). There are also commercial compilers for the chip, but I don't know
anything about them.
I usually use the ATmega128 for everything, out of laziness. In the
past, I've also compiled my hybrid synth driver (LMX/ADF-series PLL
control, plus DDS control, plus 2-line LCD and numeric-keypad UI) on the
ATmega32. This is the most capable Atmel chip that's still available in
a 40-pin DIP. Flash memory space was a bit cramped, but there's a lot
you can do to optimize the generated code when things get tight. (I
have a bad habit of using 64-bit ints for timers and such, and that
costs a LOT of code space on an 8-bit controller.)
If all you want to do is program the prescaler section of a PLL chip,
I'm sure the cheapest/smallest TinyAVR chip supported by GCC would do
just fine.
The C/C++ learning curve isn't too bad, because the platform limitations
will rule out many of the fancier C++ language constructs. Straight
ANSI C advocates will be very happy campers. The obvious advantage to
writing C on your microcontroller is that the time spent on the learning
curve won't be wasted if/when you move to a new microcontroller family.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, you will NOT end up having to learn AVR
assembly anyway to debug your design. The compiler works great.
There's nothing worse than people who go around bellowing "My CPU is
better than your CPU!," but I hate to see people spending valuable time
learning a dead-end language like PIC assembly for one-off projects.
-- jm
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