Thursday, August 18, 2005

Pwned!

Motorola/Freescale: ~20
Bryan: 0

Microchip: 1
Bryan: 0

Reason for pwnage: Undocumented features/errors.

Reason for the post:

Today I experianced my first problem with a microchip product that I had to call support and talk to for a long while only to not get an answer from them other then to try the latest version of their development environment. For some undocumented reason, it worked.

Editor's Note: Motorola/Freescale will kick your ass into the next century. When working with one of their products make sure to have a nice comfortable phone. If you think you know electronics prepare to be pwned! (anybody remember the three magical NOPs required to make spi work without random glitches every once in a while?)

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Remeber that can transciever chip of doom?

8:29 PM  
Blogger Bryan said...

Begone Evil!

I banish thee from my presence.


Yes I remember it... painfully.... I also remember a switch monitor of doom.

8:54 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yes, I DO remember the three magical NOPs! Three NOPs, three seashells, same difference. Actually NOPs form an important ingredient for many tricky little operations, power-saving mode for example. I haven't really done that much programming for PIC, for some reason I like the instruction set of the HC08 much better. I'm the kind of person who prefers to rummage in a huge unsorted box of tools for just the right one, instead of carving a new tool when I need it. All the PIC bank-switching gives me jitters.

2:31 AM  
Blogger Bryan said...

If you're using a PIC that uses bank switching you're about 5 years behind the times.

Despite their annoyances in memory handling the 16 series PIC were far superior to the HC08 in a huge number of respects (especially in the timer area where for the HC08 you had to select the right Osc. for whatever comm protocal you were using, if you wanted to bridge between protocals you were screwed, whoever thought 8 bit timers were a good idea should be shot)

The 18 series PICs are about the most powerful and cheap embedded processor you can get. You can virtually develop in C for free. Most of the new ones offer great integrated peripherials and can run up a 10 MHz instruction clock (10MHz crystal with PLL or 40 MHz external Osc)

8:03 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'll admit to not having taken the plunge and trying an 18F series. It is true that there are more free tools out there, even ones that remove the need to program in assembler. Also, someone familiar with PIC can easily move into SX programming with all kinds of megahertz to play with, which I have dabbled in.

11:40 AM  

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