Hello everyone,

I have browsed through many microcontrollers and have decided that a microcontroller from the hc11 family would be best suited for me. I have not been able to find an inexpensive programmer or instructions to make a programmer for the hc11 family. When I say inexpensive, I mean around $100 or less. If anyone could point me towards a good programmer or instructions for building a programmer that would be great. Also this might help narrow down programmers, I'm only interested in dual inline package microcontrollers.

Thanks!

 

selecting a mcu is less about selecting the chip but more about selecting a development environment (software / hardware) that can help you get the job done efficiently and inexpensively for the hobbyist.

most of the chips are highly similar in terms of their capabilities so the chip hardware is not a real issue.

Because of that, I have gravitated to PIC for low-end work and ARM (cortex-m3) for more computationally intensive work. the programmers for both are very affordable, ranging from free to <$50. the compilers are free / demo with limitations that I can live with, and the IDE are very efficient and user friendly.

so rather than focusing on a hc11 programmer that may or may not exist, it may make sense for you to go back to reexamine your mcu choice.

 

You are completely correct. I did some more searching for different types of microcontrollers and I came upon the PIC microcontroller and the PIC-PG2 programmer. I was especially disheartened about the hc11 when I found out that it had no internal storage for programs. The PIC seems to fit all my needs perfectly and also there is so much support for it that it is a much better choice.

 

Some 68HC11 devices have internal program storage but I believe you are better off with a more modern device.

I use the ATmega devices (ATmega328, ATmega644, and XMega). I program them
either using the Arduino tools or the AVRISPMKII programmer ($35 from Digikey).
For very low power applications I use the MSP430.

Both of these devices have a free C compiler (GCC) that is not a crippled version of a commercial tool. The tools work on Linux and Windows (not sure about the MAC).

(* jcl *)