I'm a beginer interested in uC's, is a cygnal chip a good choice?

Im a real begineer to microcontrollers and i have a project that I
want to get off the ground. The project is basically to design a USB
based ADC card.

I have been looking around, and I have found a uC on the market from
Cygnal (now Silicon Labs) that has a 17ch 10bit ADC and a USB
controller in one package.

The question I have is this: Is a Cygnal 8051 based chip (i have been
looking at  a C8051F320) a good choice to start from. Is there
anything really nonstandard about this chip that I should know?

If you think there would be a better chip on the market that could do
what I need please let me know :)
 Basically i have figured out i need the following

-USB controller
-a minimum of 8ch 10bit ADC (with a sampling rate of 50s/sec per ch)
-easy development

Cheers guys

Reg Orton

In article <1ebac22a.0312261209.71a64f26@posting.google.com>, Reg
<reg@mindless.com> writes
>Im a real begineer to microcontrollers and i have a project that I
>want to get off the ground. The project is basically to design a USB
>based ADC card.
>
>I have been looking around, and I have found a uC on the market from
>Cygnal (now Silicon Labs) that has a 17ch 10bit ADC and a USB
>controller in one package.
>
>The question I have is this: Is a Cygnal 8051 based chip 

Yes.

>(i have been
>looking at  a C8051F320) a good choice to start from. 

Yes. 

>Is there
>anything really nonstandard about this chip that I should know?

Look in the data book. if you are new to 8051 there is a lot to learn.
Harvard architecture to start with.

BTW the 8051, C51 Primer is  at http://Quest.phaedsys.org  
asa free pdf. Also a load of other 8051 info and SW.


>If you think there would be a better chip on the market that could do
>what I need please let me know :)

Try the Cypress ZE USB kits. These are also 8051's with USB on them.

> Basically i have figured out i need the following
>-USB controller
There are several 8051 with USB on them.

>-a minimum of 8ch 10bit ADC (with a sampling rate of 50s/sec per ch)
This is not a problem. 

The trick is finding one of the 580 odd 8051 variants with both the ADC
and the USB :-)  

If the Cygnal part does that go with it.

>-easy development

The best is Keil C kit. Expensive though.  There is an eval version with
the cygnal kit. 

It depends why you are doing the project and what the use is going to
be.  There are other less expensive compilers.  

BTW The only choice  for 8051 is C or assembler.  There is more support
and tools for C on the 51 than any other language. 

Regards
        Chris


/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills  Staffs  England    /\/\/\/\/\
/\/\/ chris@phaedsys.org       www.phaedsys.org \/\/
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/