Would you please stop spamming your badly designed board everywhere.
Know to answer the op's(original poster) questions
jtag - Joint Test Action Group. 1) Committee that established the test access port (TAP) and boundary-scan architecture defined in IEEE Standard
1149.1-1990. 2) The common name for IEEE Standard 1149.1-1990.
Most micros are programmed by applying the correct programming voltage to the correct pin and loading the binary file at the same time.
Could be via serial , parallel, usb , jtag, ethernet etc jtag via parallel or jtag via serial
Have a look at the circuit diagrams for some of the programmers that are available on the net.
Also some of the yahoo groups are good for finding more information. go to groups.yahoo.com and search on robotics The Robotics Club is really helpful and isn't focused on just one type of micro.
Programmed over usb yes but could be using a usb to rs232 connector or connecting to jtag via usb.
For the mac most of the linux micro software works fine after recompiling.There are some packages ready to go for pic, and avr.
So avr , pic and arm has tools that will work on the mac without needing a windows emulator, but you won't get an fancy ide(integrated development environment).
Another option would be using forth or something like newmicros
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isopod or servo pod. You load your program via rs232in a terminal program.
Now comes the next question which micro ?
Up to you, you need to work out what gives you the best options. If a mate can help you with one micro, price and cost of development and programming tools, programming language to use, is it powerful enough for what you want to do
A few of the many available micros
8051 lots of manufacturers including philips, Dallax-Maxim , atmel, winbond,etc
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pic
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avr
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msp430 I haven't use this one. Someone else can give you a few links for this.
arm - philips lpc210x or others from sharp , oki etc
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cypress psoc - microprocessor + programmable blocks (analog and digital)
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basic stamp basic based atom
javelin stamp java based jstamp tini
Then the choice is to either build your own or buy a dev board or few.
Forgot to mention the newmicros pods www.newmicros isopod, servopod and tinypod
I'm using an isopod and servopod in a couple of my projects.A bit expensive but very powerful. And great if you need a lot of pwm(pulse width modulation).
These work with a mac no problems as they are programmed via serial(usb to serial works fine) from a terminal program. I've programmed mine from a mac a couple of times.
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