BS2p40.....WOW
hmlittle59
Posts: 404
Hello All,
Went to order 5 and..........
I was expecting it, but did not get the word. I do not see it on the for sale site anymore. I know I looked less then 2 weeks ago and it was their. First the Commodore 64 then the BS2e and now the BS2p48. The cost was ridiculous ($12.99) but it was my ONLY OEM goto MC. I just received in 10 OEM PCB's for a Demo project and I only have (1) OEM chip left. WOW. Guess I was the only one buying them.
Did all my 3D CAD, 3D printing, Diptrace Layout, Electronic Design, Trouble Shooting, repair and SMT re-flow in my house, just like a lot of you.
Will have to figure the next best ($$$$$) move??????
maybe I just over looked it....
PS:if I had just hit that Billion dollar Power Ball, I was gonna have a BS(3) designed......
Went to order 5 and..........
I was expecting it, but did not get the word. I do not see it on the for sale site anymore. I know I looked less then 2 weeks ago and it was their. First the Commodore 64 then the BS2e and now the BS2p48. The cost was ridiculous ($12.99) but it was my ONLY OEM goto MC. I just received in 10 OEM PCB's for a Demo project and I only have (1) OEM chip left. WOW. Guess I was the only one buying them.
Did all my 3D CAD, 3D printing, Diptrace Layout, Electronic Design, Trouble Shooting, repair and SMT re-flow in my house, just like a lot of you.
Will have to figure the next best ($$$$$) move??????
maybe I just over looked it....
PS:if I had just hit that Billion dollar Power Ball, I was gonna have a BS(3) designed......
Comments
https://www.jameco.com/z/PBASIC48W-P40-Parallax-Basic-Stamp-2P-40-Interpreter-Chip-TQFP-_2153254.html
Also, you may be able to check with Tracy Allen. He as an OEM board that uses it and I recall him mentioning that he bought enough stock to last him for his product's life. He may be able to let a few go if the Jameco site quantity is inaccurate.
Just tried to order 10.....5......1...... ZERO (0) in STOCK.....
Will have to rework some boards to get through this project.
Thanks...
AND maybe Tracy Allen also.
I too was about to go to market with the OEM BS2P48...closing a deal with a few major retailers and POW - SX48BD/TQ gone! My heart dropped....
I reached out to Parallax, like Howard, and was told pretty much the same thing. There are tens of thousands of these on the open market, but not programmed. The quality of those on the open market apparently is not high quality and after attempting to program the interpreter at Parallax...there is a high failure rate, according to someone who went this route.
So the plan is to buy enough to get me through certification, through the first year of production, and in the meanwhile rewrite all the code in C for the Propeller - OMG! I can't catch a break. Maybe I'll hire a person from the forum to help me rewrite the code to speed things up?
Lots of fun! Any other thoughts about this in terms of which direction to go? The application manages a LCD display, relays, keypad, and some simple I/O - not rocket science.
I'm glad I'm not the only one left hanging....misery loves company
Regards,
Chris.
-Phil
I never used a stamp!!!
It seems it was only programmable in Pbasic?
If so you might consider ProbBasic on the P1 which I believe was made to have similar syntax and functions as Pbasic, so the reprogramming effort might be considerably reduced.
Dave
I want to hear more about this. Only the SX48? Is it because the chips on the open market are sketchy, were the unprogrammable rejects in the first place? Counterfeits? Board pulls? Or do chips just go bad from sitting around, etc?
if you go to this website: https://www.digipart.com/part/SX48BD/TQ-G you can find many companies who sell the SX48BD/TQ and other variations of this processor. It is my understanding that many years ago, a cell phone manufacturer, "conwave" (or something like that- forgot the name now) bought the company that owned the SX48 micro. Parallax seen a risk to not having access to the manufacturer, and bought a large, "last-buy". That was many years back - they have since run out. Some OEM companies, like mine developed around the SX48, and are now buying up the remains on the open market and sending them to Parallax for programming, but the failure rate of the loading the interpreter onto the SX48 has not gone well - high failure rate. Why? I don't know for sure - my guess is likely the processors have not been stored properly over the years and became internally damaged - even electronics have a shelf life.
DigitalBob,
if i go with one of the PIC micro's you have suggested, what else is needed to make it usable, and what is the language you would program it in? Does it need an interpreter loaded on it, like the SX48, or something else? The big question is what is the cheapest and easiest approach to move off of the SX48? This SX48 chip is retired and for all of us dependent on it, we need to move forward with something else. I may be able to buy some off the open market to allow me to sell my product for a 1 year, but after that, I need to have a cheaper and more reliable supply to move onto.
Parallax will charge about $7 US to program a chip with the interpreter - maybe less in volume + about $2-$3 for the chip itself from the resellers....so about $9-$10 once i get it shipped and in my hands. I need to make a decision shortly into a new direction and appreciate the input from all of you in terms of a good direction to go that will provide cost effectiveness and stability, at least for the next 5 years. It would be nice to be able to move onto something that uses something like PBASIC as the migration path would not be too difficult. The speed of my code is not hugely critical, PBASIC was more than adequate....key pad, LCD display, some sensors and relays.
I will need to decide which way to go in the next month or so, and begin the journey to migrate -at least the code is done - it's just translating it now...hopefully an easier job! DigitalBob and Phil knows some of the hurdles I have crossed
Regards,
Chris.
you are correct. The company that made the SX48BD was Ubicom. I just checked with Qualcomm and this was their response:"Ubicom's engineering team and technology was acquired by Qualcomm in 2012, and joined the Qualcomm Atheros business unit. Product support for Ubicom devices is no longer available from Qualcomm. You may be able to get information from Parallax (https://www.parallax.com/), assuming they still support it."
Parallax does support - for now, but they don't manufacture it, and apparently neither does Qualcomm any more. It looks like the window is closing on this one.
DigitalBob - please contact me via my e-mail: Chrisdlove1@gmail.com (if you don't mind) to discuss more about the PIC controllers - I don't want to tie up the forum with the discussion. Happy to share the outcome afterwards.
Thanks,
Chris.
Jameco has 46 DIP Interpreter chips in stock. I know it doesn't help much if the PC board is already laid out. I just put in a request for quote for programming 40 SX48 SMD chips.
I was just told Parallax can not program my 40 SX chips for BS2-40 Interpreter. Bummer.
"Hello,
Although Qualcomm owns these products as a result of this acquisition, manufacturing, support and sales of Ubicom devices are no longer available from Qualcomm directly. All Ubicom parts are considered discontinued.
Best Regards,
Qualcomm Support"
Part of this is because we don't have a process for handling previously sold parts that have been exposed to ambient conditions, the order-taking ability to integrate it into our manufacturing process, etc. We try to accept these requests when we can, but we've done our job with the SX. For 20+ years I kept inventory on hand for customers who had integrated it into their products. This is far beyond the typical end-of-life or "sorry, OBSOLETE" notices we receive from suppliers.
And yes, I realize Publison is not complaining.
Ken Gracey
However, a legal kurfuffle ensued about the IP, I believe concerning rights to use the PIC instruction set. That dragged on for a long time and in the end came down to a last time buy. I'm not sure I have that synopsis right. But it is unfortunate that the chip family has disappeared
When I was looking around for a supply of SX20SS chips, I found those listings on digipart or on a similar site. I was surprised, and asked my CM about that seemingly deep pocket supply. The message was to be very suspicious. Even if they are not a clone, sometimes excess production or untested or failed devices somehow get siphoned off into a grey market. That is not to say that some of those offerings might simply be good chips sitting in drawers at a CM, but caveat emptor indeed.
Regards,
Chris.
We make SX-based BASIC Stamps until we run out of SX chips. Here's the notice from about 10 years ago https://www.parallax.com/sites/default/files/downloads/SX28AC-EOL-Notice.pdf
Ken Gracey
@chrisdlove
I've downloaded a copy of the "BASICStampManual-v2.2.pdf"
lots of functions I've not seen before but nothing extreme
If you would like to post a chunk of your code, we (I) could look it over and gauge how much of a challenge a conversion to prop would be. If you don't want to make it public you can pm me.
Dave
thank-you for your kind offer. Let me clean the code up a little as it is in 6 segments, and because of this, it currently appears very repetitive. The BS2P has allows for 6 independent code segments and therefore you need to store data globally (I pushed these variables into the timer chip (scratch pad) and then switched to the next code segment, and pulled the data back out. I was planning to do this anyways before i started down the road to migration. It may take me a few days so, as soon as i have it in a logical format I'll pass it over for a quick review.
As before, you are welcome to ping me at my home e-mail: ChrisDLove1@gmail.com
Thanks again to everyone who has weighed in on this topic. Although we are all sad to see the BS2P40 go away, we will endure it.
Best regards,
Chris.
my code is ready to share - please send me a quick "hello" using my personal e-mail noted above.
Regards,
Chris.
Have done.
The more I think of it the more I think you would like the micromite.
https://micromite.org/product-category/micromites/28-pin-micromites/
The smallest uses the pic32, 28 pin processor which can be purchased ready programmed with MMBasic for about $8. Larger and faster ones are available.
You can learn all about it with these pdf's
http://geoffg.net/Downloads/Micromite/Getting Started with the Micromite.pdf
and
http://geoffg.net/Downloads/Micromite/Micromite Manual.pdf
Dave