etc.

mark@sickkids.UUCP (Mark Bartelt) (07/25/90)

I'll soon be writing some code for a new medical instrument, containing
an embedded HD647180X processor (Hitachi's enhanced version of their own
HD64180 products, which in turn run essentially the Z80 instruction set,
from what I've heard).  I'll need a good C cross-development system that
runs under MS-DOS.  Hitachi's product sheet lists three vendors who have
one available:
		American Automation
		Microtech Research
		Decmation/Z-World

Does anyone who has experience with some or all of these have anything
to say (good, bad, whatever) about them?  There's quite a cost spread
between the least and most expensive.  (Z-World, curiously, offers both
the cheapest (their old product) and the costliest (their new one, which
does indeed look quite spiffy).)  Are there any others, not listed on the
Hitachi product sheet, that I should be aware of?

Thanks in advance for any recommendations.

Mark Bartelt                          INTERNET: mark@sickkids.toronto.edu
Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto             mark@sickkids.utoronto.ca
416/598-6442                          UUCP: {utzoo,decvax}!sickkids!mark

kdq@demott.COM (Kevin D. Quitt) (07/26/90)

    I had a very nice relation with the American Automation people.  At
the time I needed a C compiler for the 8085.  Theirs worked nicely, but
wasn't ANSI - which most of their other compilers are.  It only took a
little cajoling to get them to do what they had planned to (but had
never gotten around to).  They were very responsive to any problems I
had, and quick to provide accurate answers. 

    For me, that's more important than the acutal quality of the code
generated (assuming it works, and it did). 

-- 
 _
Kevin D. Quitt         demott!kdq   kdq@demott.com
DeMott Electronics Co. 14707 Keswick St.   Van Nuys, CA 91405-1266
VOICE (818) 988-4975   FAX (818) 997-1190  MODEM (818) 997-4496 PEP last

                96.37% of all statistics are made up.

bkoball@cup.portal.com (Bruce R Koball) (07/28/90)

I recently used the Microtech Z80/HD64180 C cross compiler for an embedded
control project and found it quite adequate. The one serious bug I found
(it barfed on arrays of structures with mixed int and float data types) was
quickly dealt with by their cust. service dept. (they got me a work-around).
For lack of a source level debugger (arrggh!) I had to examine the compiler
output at the assembly level numerous times (no fault of Microtech) and found
that it produced reasonably tight, efficient code.

Bruce Koball
Motion West
2210 Sixth Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
415-540-7503
bkoball@cup.portal.com

rkaufman@entec.Wichita.NCR.COM (Roger Kaufman) (07/31/90)

The May and June issues of EMBEDDED SYSTEMS PROGRAMMING magazine had a
good article that compared seven popular Z80 C cross-compilers that run
under MS-DOS.  The author compares price, features, and gives his
evaluation after testing them.

-- 

Roger Kaufman, NCR PPD-Wichita, Wichita, Kansas, USA