Re: Microcontrollers

[Joseph Knapka <jknapka@earthlink.net>]

On 4/4/02, 7:13:13 AM, Dan Erickson <coldoneknight@rogers.com> wrote 
regarding Microcontrollers:

>       A while back I was expressing interest in writting a watchdog
> driver. What really slowed me down was trying to find an actual watchdog
> that doesnt already have drivers written for it. I did find a
> microcontroller with a watchdog onboard.

>       Basicly... I need a little information.
> http://www.national.com/parametric/0,1850,3474,00.html

> That is the link to the microcontroller. What I was wondering is,
> what is a microcontroller? what are they used for? can linux even be used
> on this thing? and who has one of them?

A microcontroller is just a microprocessor with lots of
on-chip I/O and timer logic. They usually also have a
significant chunk of EEPROM program memory and usually a bit
of RAM on the chip, too. So you can use a microcontroller
and a tiny bit of interface logic to implement a complete
embedded system.

Often, microcontrollers are I/O-enhanced versions
of general-purpose microprocessors. For example, the
Motorola MC6811 is the microcontroller version of the
6809, IIRC.

As to whether Linux can run on the particular chip
you're looking at, I don't know. I did a google
search for "Linux" + various terms from the web
page you cited above, and didn't get any hits, so
there may not be a port to that particular chip
yet.

Cheers,

-- Joe
  Using open-source softwae: free.
  Pissing Bill Gates off: priceless.

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