Review of Freescale TWR-S08DC-PT60 Tower System Daughter Card for the 5-Volt 8-bit MC9S08P Family

Table of contents

RoadTest: Freescale TWR-S08DC-PT60 Tower System Daughter Card for the 5-Volt 8-bit MC9S08P Family

Author: jlcarender

Creation date:

Evaluation Type: Evaluation Boards

Did you receive all parts the manufacturer stated would be included in the package?: True

What other parts do you consider comparable to this product?:

What were the biggest problems encountered?:

Detailed Review:

The TWR-S08DC-PT60 arrived yesterday. The board and components are of good quality, so I downloaded CodeWarrior and installed it then downloaded the service pack and pemicro and installed those. After installing the software I was up and running in a matter of minutes it was very easy to use and understand, however the labs were a little harder to find but I finally found them.  The i2c low G sensor worked great in all modes. The touch sensor is very responsive and the potentiometer worked great this is a very good demonstration of the power of the MC9S08PT60. It would be better to have the TWR-S08UNIV Tower System module also so that more features could be utilized and be able to write your own code and utilize the outputs of the low G sensor and touch sensor.

 

                                                                                                                                                              Thank you for the opportunity to evaluate the TWR-S08DC-PT60.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Joe Carender

Anonymous
  • Hi billabott.

    A clear advantage from the Freescale S08P family is its robustness, with a 5V supply, requested for example in the appliance, motor-control or power-conversion applications.

    The MCUs based on the new ARM cores like Cortex-M0 for NXP or ST and Cortex-M0+ for Freescale are clearly cost-competitive with the advantage of the performances compared to the 8-bit MCUs, but they are more targetting the lowest-power consumption (power-supply between 1,6V and 3,6V) which as an impact on their EMC immunity.

    So for the 5V applications, or simple needs with a reduced memory size (down to 8KB) or a compact package (down to 20-pin), 8-bit MCUs might still have the advantage on the new 32-bit ARM MCUs for their simplicity of programming, their reduced consumption and their cheap cost.

  • absolutely, I'm still using 8bits, many companies are still making versions based of the venerable 8051, for example silicon laboratories lineup includes devices with 24bit adc and up to 100MIPS.

     

    most of the lowest power micros i have seen have been 8 bits vs. 16 or 32 bits. credit for that may be due to transistor count alone.

  • My question is: Are 8 bit uP even relevant any longer with low  power 16 and 32 bit uP flooding the market place?