gnupic: Thread: Re: [gnupic] What's the PIC-chip type supply status ?

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 3:14 PM, Chris Glur ####@####.#### wrote:
> Originally I thought PIC's minimal DIL package idea was great.
> Later it seemed that they were morphing a wheelbarrow to a
> locomotive, with eg. their 32-bit 'version'.
>
> Now I want to look at the 16C84 again.
> Is this chip still expeted to be supplied for some years?
>

Why do you want to use such an old PIC? Even the new
variant 16F84A is very old. You can always count on
16F628A, 16F88, or the new 16F88x. Microchip is quite
good in terms of product life support and they seldom
obsolete parts.

As for PIC32, they have to be there since the competitors
are there already. Some customers like to go
for one-stop-shopping (8bit, 16bit, 32bit and analog)
and that is where Microchip is going to. And Microchip
is no long the Microchip 5 years before, it is now much
a bigger company, they can no longer stay there.

Xiaofan
http://mcuee.blogspot.com

On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 08:00:00PM -0400, Chris Glur wrote:
> Originally I thought PIC's minimal DIL package idea was great.
> Later it seemed that they were morphing a wheelbarrow to a
> locomotive, with eg. their 32-bit 'version'.
> 
> Now I want to look at the 16C84 again.
> Is this chip still expeted to be supplied for some years?

I think that you may have rolled the wheel a bit back too far.
Might I suggest you compromise and settle on the 16F88. It comes in the
same 18 pin DIP package, but contains enough memory and a bunch of useful
peripherals that can unload the code and management hassles of trying to
get multiple things done at once. And it's cheaper than the 16C84/16F84.

There's more discussion of this subject on my page here:

http://www.finitesite.com/d3jsys/16F88.html

BAJ