Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] re:ha ha ha BASIC!

Jon:

I have found that the 8052 series of Micro Controllers are not only very
powerful but the BASIC for them is very very versatile. I am a "consultant"
for the woodworking industry and specialize in CNC machinery for that
industry. I design custom CNC controllers and use the 8052 BASIC series for
the interface controls. The only real drawback that I have found is that
they are SLOW however in real world terms they still run quick enough to
handle switch and sensor inputs without problem. You can string arithmetic
and Boolean math out with multiple parenthical expressions on a single line,
as long as you don't go over the allowed characters per line. Of course this
is not particularly a one chip controller. I add 32K of ram and an 8K EPROM
for memory and program storage. The chips can access 64K of memory in
addition to the on-board BASIC interpreter. ATMEL and others have one chip
controllers based on the 8051/8052 family that also have quite a bit of on
board RAM etc. For someone needing to do more than just a handful of
operations this chip family is far more verstile and flexible than the PICs
and BASIC Stamps. Oh and the ATMEL and 8052 chips have at least 24 I/O on
board which can be used directly or as DATA and ADDRESS lines in the
conventional Microprocessor format.

Again, keep in mind that if you need to process high count encoder pulses
etc. you will need some assembly routines for that, but if reading switches,
sensors etc. is all you need then here is a very powerful BASIC platform that
performs.

Randy A.