TLA & Trade-Tech |
TLA MICROSYSTEMS now provides technical support for products distributed by Trade-Tech Components. This arrangement has been forged so that Trade-Tech can offer the level of support expected by both its customers and its principals. Both TLA and Trade-Tech regard confidentiality as paramount to the success of the industry and both parties have signed a binding document to this effect. Also regarded as important to both companies, was that each remain as independent entities. This means that TLA is under no obligation to use or recommend products from Trade-Tech and certainly will not be making any sales type representations on their behalf. In other words, getting technical support from TLA Microsystems amounts to no more than that - Technical support. You can request such support either directly or through Trade-Tech, but as TLA charges Trade-Tech for this service on an hourly basis, please ensure that you indicate that your inquiry falls into that category. Two of the microcontroller products from Trade-Tech are of particular interest to New Zealand engineers. Both are new to the market and each seem to have chosen a particular specification figure that they wanted to pursue. At one end of the spectrum are the Scenix devices, where clock speed is the driving force. These devices are essentially PIC 16C5X's on steroids, capable of operating at 50MHz. They have also added a few instructions, provided incircuit programming and built in emulation support. At the other end are the EM Microelectronic devices. Just about everybody includes "low power" in the feature list of their microcontrollers, but these guys are serious. An active current draw of 3uA is pretty impressive, as is around half a microamp in standby mode. The devices have been available in mask for some time. Now they are making flash based parts with in-circuit programming and plenty of onchip peripherals. A brief review of the EM Micro development environment |
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