Conversation

Feels like when I was a teenager, the electronics kids (I wasn’t one) were mainly building things with 555 timer and op-amp ICs as the most complex components. When did the microcontroller revolution start? With what chips/boards?
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I recall using a raw machine code based microcontroller in an undergrad class in 1995 (keying in register values and looking up opcodes). Was that the norm then? I used a Stamp2 with pbasic circa 2006. I think Arduino happened right after.
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When did cheap C-flavored microcontroller boards first appear? Was Arduino the first one? How much did an Arduino equivalent boards cost in the 90s and aughts? I remember an Atmel board that was around $300 in 2006.
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It feels like everybody was so focused on the minicomputer-PC-laptop-mobile story we kinda didn’t notice an equally radical evolution in cheap embedded microcontrollers and single-board computers. Today’s mcs and SBCs are as far beyond 1975 ones as iPhones are from minicomputers.
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Kinda ridiculous how $15 boards can run C code now and $30 boards can boot Linux. It just hit me that the “waste microcontrollers” mindset is new and I don’t have it. Nobody bothers with clever 555 circuits and stuff. Do it in software and use GPIO pins on simpler circuits.
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Or maybe it’s like the Ruby/Python frameworks moment when interpreted languages overtook Java for web. Also circa 2007 I think. There was PHP and ASP and cold fusion before that but Java was the “serious” way.
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For all intents and purposes the modern world has split into the parallel realities people insist on proving. I have no visceral relation to anything you've said, even though I'm pretty thoroughly educated. Hope someone can help with your Qs!
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Yeah, I got into things around the Arduino era, and the associated glut of cheap AVR boards. The people a few years older were used to PIC tooling, and a bit disdainful of the influx of plebs- those have been around for ages, and have had C compilers the whole time afaik
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I stumbled into cheap Atmels around 2006. You’d develop on the STK500 (purchased with others’ money - in this case the student club at the university) but the chips were <$1, and you could design a board in EAGLE, and etch it using the communal repurposed Gatorade bottle of FeCl.
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