Reply to The CPU inside the VCI-100

I checked out the controller inside the VCI-100, and according to Ean's upgrade video, it's a Hitachi H8/3052:

http://www.nuhorizons.com/developmen...y_brochure.pdf
http://www.datasheet4u.com/download.php?id=527539

That thing has way more features than strictly necessary - 512K flash ROM, 8K RAM, programmable DMA (not used), timers and clock pulse generators galore (not used). It only has two ADC channels on the chip so it must be polling the knobs and using an analog multiplexer, but it has 70+8 digital inputs/outputs! (8 of the channels are output only) That means it can read 70 switches without needing any extra hardware, or control 78 output LEDs.

The part is sold by Hitachi's IC arm called Renesas, and the GNU based toolchain is available here:

http://tool-support.renesas.com/eng/toolnews/h8_1.htm
http://tool-support.renesas.com/eng/toolnews/h8.html


FYI, Renesas are having a developer conference in October in San Diego (http://devconrenesas.com/index.html) where you can meet the Mythbusters (http://devconrenesas.com/schedule/sp...amie_adam.html)

WTF?