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> It was easy and cheap, before microcontrollers were as friendly to use as they are now. I got started with AVR microcontrollers with a DIY parallel port ISP
by st_goliath 4y ago
> It was easy and cheap, before microcontrollers were as friendly to use as they are now.
I got started with AVR microcontrollers with a DIY parallel port ISP adapter: just cut a printer cable in half, solder in 4 resistors and you were good to go :-)
Then spend a ridiculous amount of time re-learning assembly to port the parallel port LED blinking program from DOS to the AVR.
Only needing the few scavenged parts and buying just the MCU was a lot cheaper than buying the "recommended" adapter cable or some eval board, making the whole thing affordable for my 13 year old self.
- snvzz 4y agoThings certainly got better. Now it is very possible to get Arduino devboards under $3 from China. If you must, as it's possible at the same prices to instead get much more powerful microcontrollers with RISC-V or ARM processors, like the ESP32 or STM32 lines.