[sdiy] A guy could get spoiled...

[The Old Crow]

On Sun, 1 Dec 2002, patchell wrote:

>     Now that I have the Midi converter working, I noticed one
> thing...those In Circuit Programable microcontrollers can really spoil
> you.  Sorta, wam, bam there you am...Anybody thinking about taking up
> programming micro controllers should look into the Flash chips first.  
> I have been doing embedded microprocessors for 20 years now, but always
> with Eproms...Flash sure makes that look real clunky now.

  While I agree flash parts are the way to go these days, for many years
I've used an 'EPROM emulator' that plugs into the program ROM socket of a
board and one can download object code to it from a PC.  Pretty much as 
fast as reflashing an in-circuit uC.

  This sort of thing ended up useful in another way in one sdiy project: 
replacing the magnetic strip reader in my GS1 with a sort of 'RAM 
emulator' where the GS1's 4K of RAM that holds the 16 'A" and 16 'B' voice 
setting patches is replaced with the widget such that patches can be sent 
over MIDI, or loaded from a local 'master ROM' that has room for 512 patch 
pairs.  Voices can still be loaded from magnetic strips and saved to a 
patch library on a PC, but the main goal was to get the machine to not 
depend on a 21 year-old mechanical device that could fail, leaving the 
machine unpatchable.

Crow
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