What is your favourite microchip and why?

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TonyD
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What is your favourite microchip and why?

Post by TonyD »

Following the "25 microchips that shook the world" thread. I thought it would be nice to ask ...

What is your favourite microchip and why?

Perhaps its something old and almost forgotten from the distance past or its something new and shiny from the here and now.

Perhaps it something you first experienced to do something new and totally different or its something that help you solved a difficult design problem and you never forgot how it helped you?


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TonyD
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Post by TonyD »

My favourite microchip is ...

MOS 6502 8-bit microprocessor

In the early 1980's I owned a series of Z80 based computers which I learnt myself to program BASIC on, but paradoxical the 6502 is my favourite microprocessor because it was the first I learnt to program assembly language on a EMMA 6502 board whilst I was at College. Learning assembly language got in interested in microprocessors, which would get me interested in electronics and as they say "the rest is history" :)
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leon_heller
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Post by leon_heller »

I suppose that mine is the 68000. I'd played with the 8086 and built a controller round it, and hand-assembled a monitor/debugger (I couldn't afford the Intel development software) and the 68000 had a much nicer architecture and was a lot easier to use from a hardware point of view. Moreover, there was an excellent free assembler for it, called Quelo, for some strange reason. I wire-wrapped a little controller and ported my monitor program to it. I even wrote a little book about the system, "Understanding the 68000", published by Century, which got some nice reviews. I still get people contacting me occasionally who remember the book. mg obviously didn't like it, though:

http://freaknet.org/martin/tape/gos/mis ... es/reviews

Search for "Heller". I don't know what he has against bne, etc. I was commissioned to write "Understanding C" but I never got round to it.

The Milton Keynes library actually had two copies of it!

Leon
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Berni
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Post by Berni »

I guess id say the NE555.

I started off with analog electronics and some of my first projects involved it. Many years later i still use the chip here and there. The little bugger is just so darn useful in analog.
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Woody
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Post by Woody »

68000. Good call Leon! The architecture was so simple and elegant. I put one onto a 19200bps modem I did the hardware for back in the good old days along with a couple of TI C50 DSPs. I had great fun bringing it up and writing the test code for the board on it.
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Andy
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Post by Andy »

I have fond memories of the Microchip PIC16F84. The PIC seems to be used in schools still and is probably quite important in getting young people interested in "programmable" chips - it certainly got me interested in electronics and computer architecture in the first place.
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leon_heller
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Post by leon_heller »

PICs outsell all other 8-bit MCUs!

Leon
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Berni
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Post by Berni »

Well id probably put a PIC16F88 as my 2nd favorite chip. Since its the first MCU i used (Yeah i'm not very old am i?) and i kept using them for simple tasks.
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shawn
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Post by shawn »

LSI-11/03
She's the one that got away, I was kinda shy, I didn't know!
I once landed my hands on a Terak. I rescued her and her friends.
Dabbled in pascal, for the 1st time. support was expensive, though.
It was so serious machine though, all the way through it's design.
LSI-11/03:32KB:128K8"FLOPPY:B&W:ETC::: donated to church.
Once I got my ST1040, my attention shifted and she slipped away.
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nieuwhzn
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Post by nieuwhzn »

T800
Used to build my own parallel system, KEK 4/8 project from C't magazine.
Was hooked up to an Atari ST. I don't think I'll ever be able to recapture that sense of wonder and accomplishment when the system actually ran my code.
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