> ::tsk:: What _are_ they teaching in the schools these days... :)
>Don't get me wrong, PALs _do_ have their uses - especially if board space
>is at a premium, or if you're trying to obscure the internal workings of
>something to prevent the design from being stolen. I just dislike the
>"black box" aspect of them; they make the board that much harder to
>maintain and troubleshoot later.
*Tut-tut-tut* PALs are your friend. Especially for home-brew projects.
Neat thing about PALs is you can "rewire" your board with a new program on
the PAL. All those TTL parts are fine and dandy, but when you think of a
new feature after the PCB's are done and "all you need" is one more output
or input... PALs don't solve *everything* but they help. Also, a single
PAL is probably going to be more reliable than multiple TTL's, and they're
faster to assemble and make the board cheaper usually (smaller PCB = lower
price, fewer parts = less time to assemble and fewer chances for
solder-faults).
As for being harder to debug... I actually like them better. I can change
combinatorial logic through software, and if I'm not "getting" something I
can assign an internal signal to a pin and snoop it that way. (Actually, if
you ever put a logic analyzer on the Tempest Multigame PAL or the SW/ESB or
AVG Replacment PALs you'd see all sorts of curious stuff happening. ;-)
-Clay
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Received on Sat Mar 11 00:03:18 2000
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