On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 12:31:16PM -0600, John Maier wrote:

> > so, comments about the cpu?
> 
> 
> Per DigiKey (US)
> 386DX (33Mhz)(PGA) = $44
> 386SX (33Mhz)(QFP) = $15
> Z380 (20Mhz)(QFP)  = $20
> Strong Arm SA-110 (166Mhz)(QFP) = $34
> MC680x0 020-060 = all over $130

look closer at the embedded lines like i386EX, 683xx / coldfire, and
various strong arm chips from motorola, cirrus logic, and atmel.

my project at work uses 25MHz 68331, and price is under $20 per part.  I
know some of the arm chips from atmel are around the same price, and
have all kinds of nifty interfacing features, like built-in serials,
chip selects, timers, DMA, crap like that...

another option would be to take existing single-board-computer and add
requisite QBUS interface.  some starting points might be various PC104
manufacturers, the ucsimm http://www.uclinux.org/ucsimm/ (you don't have
to run linux on it, of course), or one of the various open hardware
projects at http://www.opencores.org/projects .

> >From a cost/performance the 386SX seems the best..but it QFP and I
> >can't do surface mount.

most everything is surface-mount these days.  it's going to be very hard
to find non-surface mount parts.  motorola supposedly still makes
pin-lead packages, but good luck finding a distributor who'll carry
them.  :P

if you can stick to 8/16 bit parts, it's a little easier to still find
DIPs.

-- 
  Aaron J. Grier | "Not your ordinary poofy goof." | agrier@poofygoof.com
      "[...] I generally haven't found IDM guys to be very good
       live acts, most of them just sit down at their laptop and
       tweak reaktor."  -- Brandon Daniel