Microcontrollers

[djtrickdog]

Well i was searching on http://hackaday.org and saw this neat project some guy made using a microcontroller. His project doesn't give too much description and plans how he made it. It was a DIY Laptop using a PIC Microcontroller and a lcd. Is there any plans on using microcontrollers the same way as he made his?

I know these PIC can be programmed but could they have an "Operating System?"

Thanks for the help

oh yeah and where is a good place to by these Microcontrollers and lcds for cheap?

[Pyrofan1]

oh yeah and where is a good place to by these Microcontrollers and lcds for cheap?

http://www.parallax.com/

[Telgin]

oh yeah and where is a good place to by these Microcontrollers and lcds for cheap?

http://www.parallax.com/

Was it done with an SX microcontroller or BASIC stamp? I couldn't tell from the link.

If it was, then the SX chips are dirt cheap, and I believe that the assembler and a BASIC compiler are free.

The SX is a fairly powerful chip for what it is, capable of running at 75Mhz and having a decent instruction set. I don't know if it is suitable for putting an OS on it though, I don't think it really supports important features for it like exceptions or system call type stuff.

[Pyrofan1]

The propeller is an 8 core, 32 bit microcontroller, that supports mouse, keyboard and VGA, so in theory you could create a computer/OS easily, although it does not have interrupts, but you could easily create an interrupt system.

[djtrickdog]

sorry for not being able to post a direct link to the hack i was talking about. My school has this site blocked for an odd reason. (probably since it has HACK in the url) and i just realised i posted wrong url :/
http://www.hackaday.com/
that is site

here is direct link to project:
http://www.hackaday.com/2007/03/04/grou ... iy-laptop/
http://www-scf.usc.edu/~cfenton/laptop.htm

I know the guy made his own language for the thing called Chris++. Well the urls can tell you more than i can. Thanks for the parallax site, ill look at it and buy from it if i decide to take on my own project

If i can, i hope to have mine a bit more features and alot more smaller. i dont know why he has such a huge case!

edit: holy crap this thing is 1337, too bad it is probably WAY expensive
http://www.4dsystems.com.au/prod.php?id=14

[AndrewAPrice]

Anything's possible for writing an OS on. The OS would handle all the nasty code for controlling different hardware (e.g. LCD screen, speaker, storage device) under a few simple easy functions.

Even in a ROM chip you can create an OS which runs another program buy 'emulating' your own instruction set, position counter, etc, and read it an external RAM chip or device.

EDIT: This place look cool http://www.dontronics-shop.com/. It's Australian but they ship world wide.

[AJ]

Hi,

Have a look at the AVR architecture at http://www.avrfreaks.com. I used to program their 8 bit chips (I made something resembling an hard-disk media player for my stereo system), but they now have a 32 bit architecture too.

The starter kits (STK 500 and STK 1000) are fairly cheap (stk500 approx £70 at the time I bought it, probably less now) and come with windows based C (ported GCC toolchain and ASM compilers and IDE's). Some of the chips also have on-board USB/LCD/PWM/COM controllers.

Cheers,
Adam

[djtrickdog]

thanks ill look at all of these. I bought a breadboard today and hope to learn some things with it

So starting out, anyone recommend a specific kit or something?
ive seen so many i like. I want to keep it small and portable

[jal]

edit: holy crap this thing is 1337, too bad it is probably WAY expensive
http://www.4dsystems.com.au/prod.php?id=14

You didn't follow the 'distributors' link did you? It's like $100 or something.


JAL