Date: 19 Apr 1995 From: Tim Braun To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Re: clock-doubling on 68hc1 > From: Jason Barkdull > > 4 Mhz would be nice, but hey.. it's just a Microcontroller. At least it's > > not a PIC! > what's wrong with PIC's? I've heard that they are good little devices. I wouldn't say there's something wrong with PIC's, but I would say that they hold some definite challenges for those of us who like linear addressing spaces, Von Neumann architectures, and structured programming. I'm using the 16c57 on a project, and I think I'd be done by now if I'd gone with the hc11. Or even a 68hc05. (This post may need a whine warning.) Bank switching is required to access more than 16 byte in the data memory, and 512 words in the program memory. This is causing me some grief with my current project. It's just not something you face with the hc11, until you hit 64 KBytes. I'm a long way from that. The inability to easily reference program memory for constants is a small pain, limiting total size of lookup tables, and restricting their placement in the address space. These limits are related to the bank switching. The hardware stack size with a depth of _two_ means I have to check the call tree of each test program I write. Definitely not something I'm used to, yet. Wrong, maybe not. Challenging. Some of these challenges are helped in other versions of the PIC family. The 16c57 has a nice package, good power consumption spec's, short lead times, availability, reasonable price. ______________________________________ Tim Braun | Continental Healthcare Systems Canada |