Please Don't Get Rid of ZX-40A

[liam.zbasic]

I've built a simple data acquisition system for Matlab using the ZX-40a to measure structural vibration from reflecting light to a phototransistor using ZX's getadc() command. I'm now able to easily capture time with each measurement and export it serially to Matlab. This was a major chore with picaxe.

I was enamored with picaxe chips (especially the 28X1) because of the capability relative to the price ($12.95). As with parallax, the cost is outrageous relative to features. You're basically paying for their bureaucracy and overhead. I'm preaching to the choir. Back to picaxe, when you add the cost of an external floating point device ($19.95 for uM-FPU V3.1), the price is competitive with the ZX-40a.

Recently, the ZX-40a was reduced by $10 dollars (25% drop), so that makes it cheaper than picaxe+FPU. I bought several ZX-40a chips because the last time I saw a 25% discount, the vendor was going out of business. Is this the case with ZBasic? I hope not, this is the best MCU value in the world today. Any more info available regarding Elba Corp?

[dkinzer]

Any more info available regarding Elba Corp?

Elba Corp. is alive and doing well, thank you very much. The mega32-based devices were discontinued because their limited Flash memory makes it difficult/impossible to add new features. The mega644-based devices were reduced in price to "make room" in the price structure for the new mega644P-based devices.

It is quite likely that the mega644-based devices (among which is the ZX-40a) will be discontinued some time in the future. (Atmel has announced that they will be discontinuing the mega644 chips at an unspecified time in the future. They introduced the mega644P to replace them.) Not to worry, though, because the mega644P-based ZX devices are drop-in replacements.