UPDATE Production restart of old CPUs - Rochester posting!!

[thorsinclair]

Rochester brings Freescale 68K, Intel 80C186/88 MCUs back to life

Rochester Electronics has worked out agreements with Freescale and Intel to bring various members of the 68000 and 80C186/88 embedded microcontrollers back into production for continued availability.

The company specializes in bringing back into production mature and end-of-life semiconductors devices and will next year (2015) add the Freescale and Intel processors to its current roster of such end of life designs.

According to Paul Gerrish, President at Rochester Electronics, the company has acquired all of both companies remaining finished devices and wafer/die as well as intellectual property in order to manufacture the exact same device and provide a reliable continuing source of the devices for systems that continue to use them. semiconductors

– He said the Freescale 68020 processor is available now, with the full military version of the 68020 in production by the first quarter of 2015. The 68020 processor was sampled in 2014 and will ramp up production in the first quarter of 2015.

Gerrish said plans are in the works for the rest of the 8-bit NMOS family of products featuring the 6821, 6840, and 6850 in addition to the 6809. “In addition to these products, the 68HC000 family and the 68882 are also in development. Also, other Freescale microcontrollers, such as the 68HC05 and 68HC11, are scheduled for development in 2015 he said.

"“Intel products such as the 80C186EA, EB, EC, XL, and the 80C188EA, EB, EC and XL are all into fabrication now," he said. "The EB is currently ready for qualification. Also in the development pipeline for 2015 are the Intel 8X196KB, KC, and KD microcontrollers.”"

http://www.embedded.com/electronics-new ... ck-to-life

[tofro]

Yet another one.
http://qlforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2& ... ilit=68020
Is more or less the same story, but a different(?) company.
The problem is, those guys normally produce for "defense" (military) markets - Just because there's the need and there's the money - mainly, thus it is very hard (or, rather, impossible) to come by their products.

Regards,
Tobias

[vanpeebles]

We need some mil-spec QLs

[tofro]

We need some mil-spec QLs

Khaki or olive color?

I heard of someone with such little respect for the QL he would even paint it in winter camo. Erm. No he wouldn't. Surely not.

Cheers,
Tobias

[1024MAK]

Arctic white?



Mark

[vanpeebles]

Hmph!

[dd-rocelec]

Sorry - new to the forum so just saw this. Actually, there is quite a difference in 68020's from Tekmos versus Rochester Electronics. The Rochester parts are exactly the same bumpered quad packaging using the same generation of silicon technology as the original product from Motorola (enhancement depletion NMOS and CMOS they called HMOS). The start-point for the Rochester design was the actual physical design database directly from Motorola and fully authorized by Motorola/Freescale/NXP. First revision silicon was done for a non-military customer and was fully qualified in 2015. The next round of silicon is in qual right now (March 2016) that will yield 33Mhz parts and military parts. Rochester expects to be able to ship next round of silicon in June 2016, but the current round is qualified at 16Mhz Industrial and shipping today.

[vanpeebles]

Thanks for the post! What enhancements do the military spec chips have? Are they for Knight Industries etc?

[vanpeebles]

dd-rocelec has pointed out that Rochester sell EP180s also

https://www.rocelec.com/parts/results/all/?s=EP1810

Could these be used for a gold card clone??

We had dd-rocelec on the chat tonight and sadly it was wasted on a hardware dummy such as myself.

20:01 <dd-rocelec>: We have the Altera Classic parts in stock
20:02 <vanpeebles>: old or new?
20:02 <dd-rocelec>: old original from Altera
20:02 <dd-rocelec>: wafer stock so we can build if needed

[twellys]

What, I think, dd-rocelec and others are saying is:

Rochester: Old designs just re-manufactured on existing dies.

Tekmos: Design re-created from an old die, then manufactured on new dies (so the clock speed can be higher).


So, you can replace your 680x0 easily from a BBQL/(Super)Gold using a Rochester part or a Tekmos part (when available). However you can only increase the clock speed in a Tekmos part (UltraGold card perhaps?).


Note: I'm just inferring the results from their respective websites, that's all.

(From an old fumbling electronics engineer)