From: "Dwight K. Elvey" 
To: atm{at}shore.net
Reply-To: "Dwight K. Elvey" 



Hi
 Also look at evaluation boards from the original manufactures.
These are usually cheaper than other SBC's. Another processor to look at is
the 80186/188's. These have been around for a long time but can be handy. I
have an evaluation board that was made by AMD ( we no longer make 186's ).
It comes with enough flash and RAM to easily meet the requirements of such
a system.
 For languages, you should also consider using Forth. Especially
while you are debugging things. Once you have your hardware up and running,
you may want to switch to something like C because of source availability.
It is quite easy to put a native Forth on most SBC's. This give one the
ability to interactively debug and work out algorithms. I've used this
language on all of the embedded applications I used to do at a previous
employer( actually two back ). I even did one project that I rewrote things
into C and still figured that I saved about a month on the project( a
customer requirement ).
Later
Dwight

>From: "Emery Greg" 
>
>Tom:
>
>Your welcome to pass along my email to your friend - I am not working on it
now, but hopefully in a year or so :).
>
>In terms of cost, if a cheap laptop can be bought second hand from the
internet- the laptop and stepper interface via the parallel port is of the
same order of cost as the controller board or SBC.  If you are buying a new
laptop, microcontrollers or SBC is much cheaper.
>
>I just hate going to one of my clubs darksites and seeing a **&^%%!!! laptop
screen - even if it is in night vision mode.
>
>Jeff,
>
> I remember seeing the Rabbits.  The Motorola or Zilog seemed neet as well -
Basic or C language programming, in circuit EEPROM all via RS232.  Doesn't
get more convenient than that :):)
>
>ttfn
>greg
>
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