Prev: How to save config. spec. to file from command prompt?
Next: Miniature soldering irons
From: Stephen Pelc on 1 Jun 2010 13:25
On Tue, 01 Jun 2010 17:56:25 +0100, Peter <nospam(a)nospam9876.com>
wrote:

>One option is to stick with the H8 family, which still exists, with
>the downside of Hitachi being the #1 most arrogant and useless-support
>company; a distinction they have managed to maintain for the 20 years
>I have been dealing with them. Clearly they have ISO9000 approval -
>consistent!!

I recently picked up H8/300H again after a decade or so. Depending
on your volume, Renesas are very hungry at the moment. The tools
just work and whatever we need just arrives.

>Performance is not an issue - two UARTs capable of 115200 baud
>concurrently... easy. Plus the ability to run a TCP/IP stack for an
>ethernet port would be nice (which the H8 cannot do due to its
>64k-byte codespace limit).

We have run TCP/IP on both H8/300H and H8S. IF you want to stay
with Renesas, there'a always the new RX core. Otherwise, there's
a vast number of ARM/Cortex parts to play with or Coldfire or any
number of other 32 bit cores.

Stephen


--
Stephen Pelc, stephenXXX(a)mpeforth.com
MicroProcessor Engineering Ltd - More Real, Less Time
133 Hill Lane, Southampton SO15 5AF, England
tel: +44 (0)23 8063 1441, fax: +44 (0)23 8033 9691
web: http://www.mpeforth.com - free VFX Forth downloads
From: Paul Carpenter on 1 Jun 2010 14:24
In article <4c054124.345587470(a)192.168.0.50>, stephenXXX(a)mpeforth.com
says...
> On Tue, 01 Jun 2010 17:56:25 +0100, Peter <nospam(a)nospam9876.com>
> wrote:
>
> >One option is to stick with the H8 family, which still exists, with
> >the downside of Hitachi being the #1 most arrogant and useless-support
> >company; a distinction they have managed to maintain for the 20 years
> >I have been dealing with them. Clearly they have ISO9000 approval -
> >consistent!!

They fund the people in India to support the GNU tools for
H8/H/S/HS/HSX/LX.

I have had a few dealings with H8 families (see sig), never used H8/300
always used H8/300H or above.

> I recently picked up H8/300H again after a decade or so. Depending
> on your volume, Renesas are very hungry at the moment. The tools
> just work and whatever we need just arrives.

Other than long ago debacles of 3048 and eventually 3048B, most of the
time the silicon and tools work, just as much as most companies.

> >Performance is not an issue - two UARTs capable of 115200 baud
> >concurrently... easy. Plus the ability to run a TCP/IP stack for an
> >ethernet port would be nice (which the H8 cannot do due to its
> >64k-byte codespace limit).

Most H8/300H and above can easily handle that with 16MB plus address
space as well.

> We have run TCP/IP on both H8/300H and H8S. IF you want to stay
> with Renesas, there'a always the new RX core. Otherwise, there's
> a vast number of ARM/Cortex parts to play with or Coldfire or any
> number of other 32 bit cores.

There have been various TCP/IP stacks ported to H8/300H and H8/300HS.
See links pages from sig page.

Unless of course you want Gigabit then you will need much larger
CPU and RAM, with higher bus bandwidth.

--
Paul Carpenter | paul(a)pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
<http://www.pcserviceselectronics.co.uk/> PC Services
<http://www.pcserviceselectronics.co.uk/fonts/> Timing Diagram Font
<http://www.gnuh8.org.uk/> GNU H8 - compiler & Renesas H8/H8S/H8 Tiny
<http://www.badweb.org.uk/> For those web sites you hate
From: TTman on 1 Jun 2010 15:05
>
> I have also been using the Atmel 90S1200-4YC in a volume product; this
> was EOLd a few years ago but we had huge stocks and can still buy them
> around the place. I have just heard that Atmel have (stupidly) dropped
> the 20-pin package, which means a PCB redesign...
>

The TINY2313 should be a virtual 'drop in'.




> We started on work to replace the H8 ~ 3 years ago and bought the
> Mega128 development kit (Atmel being THE embedded company a few years
> ago) then this had to be postponed due to other work. Now we are
> re-opening it but looking at Atmel's dropping of the very popular
> AT-Tiny package, and other comments around the place, I wonder whether
> Atmel are going to be a player in this market for much longer.........
>
> The obvious choice today is Microchip. They seem to be getting most
> new designs. The code would be written wholly in C anyway (the present
> H8 is largely assembler but functionally it is nothing complicated;
> just some intricate ISRs).
>
> Performance is not an issue - two UARTs capable of 115200 baud
> concurrently... easy. Plus the ability to run a TCP/IP stack for an
> ethernet port would be nice (which the H8 cannot do due to its
> 64k-byte codespace limit).
>
> I'd think that a Hitachi chip which is current today may well outlast
> Atmel - as well as myself (aged 53 :)). So that is a plus for Hitachi.
> Which Hitachi H8s are still really common? (2 UARTs, some I/O)?
>
> We use the old Hitech (Australia) compiler, but they have now sold out
> to Microchip, but that doesn't matter. A binary-compatible Hitachi
> processor would potentially save a lot of work.
>
> Any comments?
>

Chose one of the XMega chips.....


From: Frank-Christian Krügel on 1 Jun 2010 16:27
Am 01.06.2010 18:56, schrieb Peter:

> Any comments?

I'd go for a Cortex M3 device - powerful, cheap, and parts available
from at least half a dozen vendors: Atmel, TI, STM, NXP, Toshiba, EFM,
.... If you consider how long the ARM7 is in use, it is a safe bet that
the ARM Cortex family will still be alive in 10 to 15 years. Plus you
won't depend on a single vendor.

Downside: All Cortex devices share the core, which contains the CPU,
Interrupt Controller, Systick Timer, Debug Unit. The peripherials and
the pinouts are different from vendor to vendor and from product line to
product line. For the ARM7 controllers only the CPU core was common,
everything else was vendor specific, so you don't want to start with
them now. You might have to face a board redesign in 10 years (or even
want one in order to use newer, cheaper parts with lower power
consumption), but the overall impact to the product and the firmware is
going to be rather low.

--
Mit freundlichen Gr��en

Frank-Christian Kr�gel

From: Ulf Samuelsson on 1 Jun 2010 18:06
Peter skrev:
> I have a product which has been running for 16 years, based on a
> Hitachi H8/323 (16k PROM, 48k external address space).
>
> This CPU is end of life though we can still buy it from Hitachi
> (Renesas) and countless secondhand chip dealers in the USA :)
>
> We are looking at re-doing the whole thing to get rid of the
> processor.
>
> One option is to stick with the H8 family, which still exists, with
> the downside of Hitachi being the #1 most arrogant and useless-support
> company; a distinction they have managed to maintain for the 20 years
> I have been dealing with them. Clearly they have ISO9000 approval -
> consistent!!
>
> I have also been using the Atmel 90S1200-4YC in a volume product; this
> was EOLd a few years ago but we had huge stocks and can still buy them
> around the place. I have just heard that Atmel have (stupidly) dropped
> the 20-pin package, which means a PCB redesign...
>

I think that if you need to have a 20 pin packages, there are plenty
of AVR options.

ATtiny2313.
ATtiny4313
ATtiny26 (although I dont recommend this)
ATtiny261
ATtiny461
ATtiny861

> We started on work to replace the H8 ~ 3 years ago and bought the
> Mega128 development kit (Atmel being THE embedded company a few years
> ago) then this had to be postponed due to other work. Now we are
> re-opening it but looking at Atmel's dropping of the very popular
> AT-Tiny package, and other comments around the place, I wonder whether
> Atmel are going to be a player in this market for much longer.........

As long as the marketshare is growing, at the expense of Microchip and
others, I guess Atmel plans to stay alive.

The preferred chip today, is not the ATmega128.
You would go either with the ATmega1281 (with extra power management)
or with the ATmega128A which is lower cost, lower power and same
functionality.

The XMEGA would be an even better choice due to internal DMA
which will offload the UART. It is a much nicer chip.

>
> The obvious choice today is Microchip. They seem to be getting most
> new designs.

Not true from where I am standing.


> The code would be written wholly in C anyway (the present
> H8 is largely assembler but functionally it is nothing complicated;
> just some intricate ISRs).
>
> Performance is not an issue - two UARTs capable of 115200 baud
> concurrently... easy. Plus the ability to run a TCP/IP stack for an
> ethernet port would be nice (which the H8 cannot do due to its
> 64k-byte codespace limit).
>

If you need ethernet, they you better look at a 32 bit chip.
Typically you need to have large amount of SRAM for a TCP/IP stack
which is not so cheap in the typical 8 bit micro process.
The 32 bit machines have more memory, but also higher sleep currents.
The AT32UC3A (32 bit AVR), AT91SAM7X (ARM7) and soon the AT91SAM3X
(Cortex-M3) chips would be the Atmel alternatives.

The AT32UC3A comes with an free of charge Eclipse/gcc environment
with wizards to support the inclusion of drivers and goodies
like lwIP TCP/IP stack and FreeRTOS.

> I'd think that a Hitachi chip which is current today may well outlast
> Atmel - as well as myself (aged 53 :)). So that is a plus for Hitachi.
> Which Hitachi H8s are still really common? (2 UARTs, some I/O)?
>

> We use the old Hitech (Australia) compiler, but they have now sold out
> to Microchip, but that doesn't matter. A binary-compatible Hitachi
> processor would potentially save a lot of work.
>
> Any comments?
>


--
Best Regards
Ulf Samuelsson
These are my own personal opinions, which may
or may not be shared by my employer Atmel Nordic AB
 |  Next  |  Last
Pages: 1 2
Prev: How to save config. spec. to file from command prompt?
Next: Miniature soldering irons