RE: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] net-enabled microcontrollers for appliances, VCRs, stereos

[Michael <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

They have paper cell phones supposedly due to hit the market soon. They
say they won't cost any more than buying a phone card with the same amount
of time on them. If you take that as truth then you have to figure the
damn things can't cost much. It doesn't cost much to make simple chips and
circuit boards either if you have the $$$ to make enough of them at once.
I know a couple years ago in electronic engineering classes we could buy
186 CPU's for about $1 each. The timing chip cost more than the damn CPU.
At the time they were using those in PDA's. Was the first time I'd ever
even used a freaken 186 CPU. 8086's and 286's but that was my first 186.
;> I'm sure the school baught them in large quanities to get that price
but then so would most businesses. Certainly a simple CPU like that is
overkill for the needed low-power web-server that only gets 4 or 5 hits a
day. Of course the chip has to get it's data from someplace else.. I'd
assume the gadget in question would only provide information it had to
sense anyway. Then a couple dollars more for some sort of network
connection. Given you can buy a LAN card for $10 I'm sure a company could
build them into their own device for at least half of that given the
numbers they'd buy the parts in at once.

I take apart everything. Never let me babysit your kids.

> Well, while we are at it, why don't I just build a web server with a
> 74LS02? :-)
> That chip, is an eeprom. That has no CPU or logic processing hardware,
> other than addressing logic. It's cheap, because it's simple. Have any
> of you guys actually taken apart one of those security tags? Do you know
> what's in it? It's a little radio transmitter, right? In the loosest
> form of the definition. It's a small antenna built to cause resonance in
> another antenna that's tuned slightly different. Three copper traces and
> a small fusible bridge. The little rectangular ones are based on foil
> leaves encapsulated in plastic. Once again, no logic, no CPU, no
> storage. Notice, 6502 CPU's are still around a few dollars a chip.
> Notice, they all come down in price to a specific point, then they
> stick. Why? I'll let you think about that.

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