> Why I'm thinking of the core being obsolete?
> After using the 80186's for nearly 20 years successfully,
> many of my customers had to change the processor, as the
> chip manufacturers announced EOL for the parts.

I see.  Well, it has not been such a bad CPU for its times.

> Even as I used the 8086 family chips from the very
> beginning (I still have one in engineering sample 8088's),
> I definitely advise against making any new designs
> based on a plain 16 bit 80x86.

I admit, I was impressed by amount of peripherals Lantronix stuffed
onto their chip, so I may be biased. (Impressed not realy by the core
but by those 2x CAN channels, 2x Ethernet channels, 4x UART and other
goodies on DSTni-EX).

> Please think that for a successful embedded product
> used in any non-consumer use, the parts should be
> available for 15 to 20 years from the design. 

Quite good point.

rziak wrote:
>>Why 80186 (or 80188)? The architecture is obsolete, so
>>I'd avoid it in new designs. An ARM could do the same
>>with modern tools and plenty of more power.
> 
> 
> I would not call it obsolete, it is a mature core with mature tools
> very suitable for small non-battery operrated embedded systems and
> components. There exist various mutations still in production and one
> can also see on Lantronix website that this core is successfuly used in
> new products (like XPort and WiPort).
> 
> Speaking of Lantronix, I quite like their DSTni-EX for the optimized
> instruction set and high amount of integrated prefipherals. However, I
> did not use it myself, just read the datashet.


You seem to have already plenty of responses.

Why I'm thinking of the core being obsolete?
After using the 80186's for nearly 20 years successfully,
many of my customers had to change the processor, as the
chip manufacturers announced EOL for the parts.

Though it may be OT: After 2 years of search for
a replacement, I found the Atmel AT91 series ARMs
with functionality covering well that of an 80186.

As an example: Porting the software of a real-time
controller with 40 kbytes of 80186 code to the ARM
took a week, as both were programmed with C without
ant dirty tricks used. Surprisingly, the code size
was about the same (40064 bytes vs. 40036 bytes). The
compilers used were Borland C v. 4.5 and GCC v. 3.2.1
in Thumb mode.

Even as I used the 8086 family chips from the very
beginning (I still have one in engineering sample 8088's),
I definitely advise against making any new designs
based on a plain 16 bit 80x86.

Please think that for a successful embedded product
used in any non-consumer use, the parts should be
available for 15 to 20 years from the design.

-- 

Tauno Voipio
tauno voipio (at) iki fi

On 2005-10-02, Jim Stewart <jstewart@jkmicro.com> wrote:

> Know any ARM operating systems that can boot
> in 500ms?

Um, yes.  Pretty much all of the RTOSes I've ever seen?

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  An air of FRENCH
                                  at               FRIES permeates my
                               visi.com            nostrils!!

> While I agree that programming a large single thread application in
> real mode can become quite messy, but using some kind of RTOS and
> allocating separate code, data and stack segments for each task and
> keeping each of them below 64 KiB should not be too hard in most
> cases.

So if I can summarize this argument: "Yes, working with this core is
like jumping through blazing hoops but, really, they're not blazing
quite as vigorously as it appears from a distance, and you'd be
surprised at just how much pain a human can endure before blacking
out".

On 1 Oct 2005 19:41:21 -0700, "larwe" <zwsdotcom@gmail.com> wrote:

>rziak wrote:
>> > Programming the 186 gets you all the disadvantages of real-mode x86
>>
>> What of the real mode intimidates you ? Name some.
>
>Well damn, I don't need to go anywhere past the memory model or the
>scarce and narrow registers to make my point more than adequately. 

While I agree that programming a large single thread application in
real mode can become quite messy, but using some kind of RTOS and
allocating separate code, data and stack segments for each task and
keeping each of them below 64 KiB should not be too hard in most
cases. 

Common library calls would have to use far calls, but would
automatically use task specific static data and stack areas etc. The
task switching in the OS would be slightly more complicated and the
communication between tasks would go through OS supplied communication
primitives (which is usually considered a good thing rather than
poking around in a foreign task data space :-).

Paul

If you are building an embedded controller using standard parts then perhaps 
the 80186 is not the best choice, but if you are building your own FPGA/ASIC 
than it makes perfect sense to look at some of the mature cores like the 
8051, Z80 and 8086. Although having said that, the old *obsolete* 8051 part 
is still in full production by Philips/Siemens/Atmel after 25 years! This 
can't be all for maintaining legacy designs, they must be selected for new 
designs as well?

As Rziak were saying there are lots of good development tools available for 
the 86/186 not to mention the enormous amount of legacy code, also to test 
your code just open a DOS box on your 64bits desktop and run the code, works 
like a charm :-)

I might be biased... http://www.ht-lab.com/freecores/cpu8086/cpu86.html :-)

Hans

PS I didn't know who Rue Mcclanhan was, but after a quick google search 
guess what? she played the sexy one in the Golden Girls TV series, so I 
guess given the success of the series she was a good choice  :-)


"larwe" <zwsdotcom@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:1128191473.554276.253920@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>> > Why 80186 (or 80188)? The architecture is obsolete, so
>>
>> I would not call it obsolete, it is a mature core with mature tools
>> very suitable for small non-battery operrated embedded systems and
>
> Rue McLanahan is a mature actress, but I wouldn't choose her to play
> the part of sex kitten in a new movie.
>
> Programming the 186 gets you all the disadvantages of real-mode x86
> programming with none of the advantages of, well, anything really. ARM
> tools are mature and readily available, operating systems abound, and
> peers to ask for help are everywhere.
> 

On Sat, 01 Oct 2005 20:36:53 -0700, Jim Stewart <jstewart@jkmicro.com>
wrote:

>larwe wrote:
>> rziak wrote:
>> 
>>>>Programming the 186 gets you all the disadvantages of real-mode x86
>>>
>>>What of the real mode intimidates you ? Name some.
>> 
>> 
>> Well damn, I don't need to go anywhere past the memory model or the
>> scarce and narrow registers to make my point more than adequately. It's
>> the 21st century now, I have my VIC-20s for nostalgia but don't use
>> them for any production purpose.
>> 
>> 
>>>However, ARM is off-topic in this thread.
>> 
>> 
>> Welcome to the Internet, lad - here's a lemon-scented towel and a
>> coupon good for two bananas and a ferret. Once you redeem it, maybe you
>> can come back and see if you have any better luck controlling what is
>> "on-topic" in a Usenet group, particularly when the content of the
>> message is utterly appropriate to the group and merely doesn't agree
>> with what you were thinking in a particular thread.
>> 
>> Anyway, anyone asking about coming up on the 186 in this day and age
>> had better be supporting a legacy project or working with an ASIC that
>> has a 186 inside it. At a stretch, I could swallow a short-run design
>> intended to use up a huge drawer full of dusty 186 parts. But there are
>> so many other products so much better in so many ways that
>> intentionally selecting a 186 except in the sorts of circumstances I
>> illustrated is quite insane.
>
>Know any ARM operating systems that can boot
>in 500ms?
>

Linux. 
If I recall correctly there was a discussion on boot times for
embedded Linux on comp.os.linux.embedded a while ago.
Someone pointed to some work done by Samsung on shortning
the boot time of Linux on their ARMs. They got this down to below
500ms. Most other OSes available for ARM should boot much
faster than this.
I agree with larwe. Choosing a 186 for a new design if there are not
some sort of unusual circumstances is insane.

Regards
  Anton Erasmus

larwe wrote:
> rziak wrote:
> 
>>>Programming the 186 gets you all the disadvantages of real-mode x86
>>
>>What of the real mode intimidates you ? Name some.
> 
> 
> Well damn, I don't need to go anywhere past the memory model or the
> scarce and narrow registers to make my point more than adequately. It's
> the 21st century now, I have my VIC-20s for nostalgia but don't use
> them for any production purpose.
> 
> 
>>However, ARM is off-topic in this thread.
> 
> 
> Welcome to the Internet, lad - here's a lemon-scented towel and a
> coupon good for two bananas and a ferret. Once you redeem it, maybe you
> can come back and see if you have any better luck controlling what is
> "on-topic" in a Usenet group, particularly when the content of the
> message is utterly appropriate to the group and merely doesn't agree
> with what you were thinking in a particular thread.
> 
> Anyway, anyone asking about coming up on the 186 in this day and age
> had better be supporting a legacy project or working with an ASIC that
> has a 186 inside it. At a stretch, I could swallow a short-run design
> intended to use up a huge drawer full of dusty 186 parts. But there are
> so many other products so much better in so many ways that
> intentionally selecting a 186 except in the sorts of circumstances I
> illustrated is quite insane.

Know any ARM operating systems that can boot
in 500ms?

rziak wrote:
> > Programming the 186 gets you all the disadvantages of real-mode x86
>
> What of the real mode intimidates you ? Name some.

Well damn, I don't need to go anywhere past the memory model or the
scarce and narrow registers to make my point more than adequately. It's
the 21st century now, I have my VIC-20s for nostalgia but don't use
them for any production purpose.

> However, ARM is off-topic in this thread.

Welcome to the Internet, lad - here's a lemon-scented towel and a
coupon good for two bananas and a ferret. Once you redeem it, maybe you
can come back and see if you have any better luck controlling what is
"on-topic" in a Usenet group, particularly when the content of the
message is utterly appropriate to the group and merely doesn't agree
with what you were thinking in a particular thread.

Anyway, anyone asking about coming up on the 186 in this day and age
had better be supporting a legacy project or working with an ASIC that
has a 186 inside it. At a stretch, I could swallow a short-run design
intended to use up a huge drawer full of dusty 186 parts. But there are
so many other products so much better in so many ways that
intentionally selecting a 186 except in the sorts of circumstances I
illustrated is quite insane.

> Programming the 186 gets you all the disadvantages of real-mode x86

What of the real mode intimidates you ? Name some.

> programming with none of the advantages of, well, anything really. ARM
> tools are mature and readily available, operating systems abound, and
> peers to ask for help are everywhere.

However, ARM is off-topic in this thread.