68300

> Brian,
>
>   In general I agree with other posts that choosing a tool is
> important, but your email suggests to me that you are not yet
> comfortable with a C/C++ development environment, and would rather
> develop with Assembly.
>
>   I would suggest to use a 68xx family processor, instead of 68xxx,
>  because of hardware and software "learning curves" will be
> much  shorter, and because a 68xxx is very likely overkill.
>
>   If true that coin application is not overly complex (less than 4K
>  of assembly), then basically any 68xx micro will do just fine
> (68HC08, 68HC11, etc).
>   Once you learn to design with them, you can easily
> "upgrade" your  knowledge to 68xxx processors.
>   Assemblers are very inexpensive, some of them even free, but
> depending on your budget you may want to spend some money to make  sure
> you get quality product and support.
>

Thankyou very much for your advice! I'm actually developing the project
around the PIC range of MicroControllers now, partly because I picked up a
good development package and an expensive book for next to nothing on
Ebay, and partly because they are relatively inexpensive to buy.

I am still learning to develop for the 68000 range of processors though,
and yes you're right I'm learning in Assembly at the moment.  I'm learning
to write programs in C for AmigaOS at the aswel, and I believe that once
I'm much more familiar with C I can apply those skills to program
MicroControllers in C too.

My application is actually quite a bit more complicated than "just" a
coinmeter because it needs to be able to interface and communicate with a
PDA, and make available a few other complicated features.  I'm not
completely new to MicroControllers, but I AM new to the PIC - so I'm sure
it will be a VERY steep learning curve.  But I enjoy it, so that's the
main thing :)

Thanks again for your advice :)





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Brian Hoskins
South Wales, UK

Email: BrianJHoskins@...
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