Circuit Cellar Ink 87
October 1997

Table of Contents

2 Ken Davidson	Task Manager And the Survey Says ...
6	Reader I/O Letters to the Editor
8 Harv Weiner	New Product News
12 Damon Chu	Analog Data Acquisition As computer components evolve, chips get smaller, faster, and more integrated. Take the PIC12C672. In eight pins, Microchip brings us 2048 words of PROM, 128 bytes of user RAM, and advanced features like on-chip ADC and four analog channels.
18 Steven Kraft	DTMF Message Decoders Telephone Aids for the Hearing Impaired Talking on the telephone is an ordinary part of life -- unless you can't hear. Steven shows how to build a DTMF message decoder to improve voice communication over the telephone for the hearing impaired. Download: DTMFDEC.ZIP
26 Craig Pataky	Interprocess Communication Moving DOS Programs into Windows Sometimes you want your program running in DOS and you want a GUI front end. Impossible? Not according to Craig. Although DOS and Windows are a universe apart, all you need is a wormhole to bring them together. Here's how to create one. Download: WMHOLE.ZIP
30 Bill Jackson Reynaldo Archide	Compressed-Code TinyBASIC In the embedded world, it's a precarious balance between cost and performance. TO maximize memory and reduce costs, Bill and Reynaldo suggest MIPS16, an extension of LSI Logic's TinyRISC family.
Embedded PC 34 Harv Weiner	Nouveau PC
Embedded PC 39 Jim Blazer Janos Levendovszky Robert Haris	Intelligent Data Acquisition Strapped by a narrow bus and an overly taxed CPU, embedded PCs have traditionally been unable to compete with high-end data acquisition and processing. But, with a DSP coprocessor, the PC is breaking into this niche.
Embedded PC 44 Steve Lisberger	Precision Timing and I/O When precise timing of events is required, software is not the way to go since each call to the clock also takes up time. Steve therefore moves this operation into the hardware and gains better than 10-uS resolution. Download: TIMING.ZIP
Embedded PC 56 Dennis Liles Rick Lehrbaum	PC/104 Quarter PC/104 Steps Out of the Box There are times when the teenie-weenie PC/104 form factor just doesn't cut it. Why? Because it takes 1-2 years for the latest desktop CPUs to shrink enough to fit, and sometimes you need mroe high-end functions on a board. Enter EBX.
Embedded PC 60 Fred Eady	Applied PCs Managing a NASA Plant-Growth Chamber, Part 2: Coordinating Sensors and Analyzing Data Fred offer a traditional data-collection technique? No way. Instead, he's taking the hardware he selected last month, starting at the sensor end, tracing the datastream to the SBC301 flash file, and serving it up to a Web browser.
66 Ingo Cyliax	MicroSeries MC68030 Workstation, Part 2: The Boot PROM Monitor & Device Drivers Stranded by Motorola's decision to discontinue an affordable MC68000 eval board, Ingo built a 68k platform to teach programming in assembly. After covering the hardware last month, he looks at the boot-PROM monitor and how to build device drivers.
74 Jeff Bachiochi	From the Bench Prototypes of the Rich and Famous -- Not! Once, the undersides of prototype boards were a spaghetti-factory wonder. Now, with the advent of mail-order PCBs, engineers can unwire their prototypes. Heck, they can just E-mail them in via the Internet.
78 Tom Cantrell	Silicon Update A(r)Ray of Analog Hope Although Tom trembles before the analog god, he regrets the losses that digital brings. Seeking analog fidelity and digital ease, he finds his Mecca in Motorola's programmable analog array.
65	Advertiser's Index
96 Steve Ciarcia	HTML Priority Interrupt The People's Contest

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