lpc2106

Or are there any guys OK to share an 250 pces order with Amontec? In this case, Amontec will buy by AVNET and will share 125 units or more.

Let me know.

Laurent Gauch

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I can see that the Philips ARM MCUs will be taking off big time. If you were smart, you would not bother with trying to save a few bucks by combining orders, but rather find a way to market these chips in proto/eval boards and end up ordering them by the basket. You could even offer small quantities of the chips for resale with enough markup to make it worthwhile. I would do this, but it is pretty far afield from what we are making. It seems to be right in line with what you are doing however.

I think this chip is generating an awful lot of interest considering that it really is just another ARM chip. But I guess Philips has a unique product due to the small size (no external bus) and they seem to be doing a good job of marketing it. Too bad OKI is not better at marketing their chips, they have some better products in my opinion. But they seem more interested in the larger customers.

I think it is more than just another ARM chip. This is the first ARM processor with both RAM and Flash on-chip. Atmel, for instance, has several ARMs with Flash, but no RAM; and several with RAM ... but no Flash. That never made much sense to me. Philips finally got it right. Now I can slap together an ARM based system without having to worry about wiring up any external memory. That is a huge decrease in the hassle required to get a system going.

A processor that requires external memory isn't really a microcontroller in my book.

But Philips still made some bad design decisions (IMO). For instance, the LPC2106 has two RS232 interfaces, but both of them share pins with PWM outputs. So if you want serial I/O, you have to give up a PWM channel. That seems silly to me. There are several GPIO with no secondary function, so I don't understand why they piled more than one secondary function onto a single pin. If they really needed to double up, why couldn't they make one RS232 multiplex with something else, such as an external interrupt?

-bob

If you want to make it even easier, get yourself a tube of solder paste. I got a tube about six months ago, and haven't used wire solder since for SMT. Run a bead of paste along a row of pins, then touch a HOT soldering iron to each pin and the solder just slurps into place. It is almost like magic. If you get any shorts, then use less paste.

Make sure you practice on some throwaway parts till you get the technique down, but after a few minutes you should be able to do it like a pro.

Wire solder still works better for through-hole soldering.

-bob