Re: TI-H: TI Hardware

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Re: TI-H: TI Hardware


PIC : see http://www.microchip.com/
It is considered a microcontroller, as opposed to a microprocessor.  All
its code and memory are located on the one chip, and in minimal
operation it requires no external components to work.

There are a variety of features available.  Only a few chips have an
internal oscillator, for example.  Some have hardware serial ports, some
have analog to digital converters, some with PWM, capture, compare, etc.

AVR (http://www.avr.com/) is a competing product.  It has several good
points, but can't yet compete with the PIC on availability and
peripherals.

Both are quite spiffy.  You can also look up scenix (http://www.scenix/)
which is a PIC clone clocking up to 100MHz.  Instead of having
peripherals built into the chip, they build the peripheral with
software.  Forinstance, they have a complete 1200 baud modem with DTMF
dialer program you can run on these chips.  It's way cool.

I like to think of them as a programmable TTL chip.  They are mostly
programmed in assembly, but there exist other languages for them.

Each chip will range from $0.50 US to $20.00 US, and you can build
programmers out of a few parts.  All the development software is free. 
So for $50, you could get started in them.  See
http://www.ubasics.com/adam/pic/ for some more resources.  PIC Archive
has some programmers in it for pics.  If you want more info on AVR, ask
grant.  I have another resource for both PIC and Scenix, but don't have
the addy at this moment.  Ask and it shall be yours.

-Adam

J D wrote:
> 
> We've sort of had nothing hardware-oriented to talk about, and since we're
> all more or less (sometimes more, sometimes less) friendly with each other,
> the topics usually descend into all kinds of interesting tangents.
> 
> However, this is a fascinating idea.  What, praytell, is a PIC?  Or an AVR?
> I've seen these mentioned before but I never really got what they stood for
> or what they are.  Some kind of flashable logic circuit?  Could I build a
> Pentium out of a PIC?  How's it work?
> 
> We've had the C compiler talk.  Apparently everyone is sure it'll never
> happen.  ::shrug::
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