good story about Microchip

So last week I was in Atlanta,Georgia. While there I went to the regional headquarters of Microchip. Due to the pandemic the building was almost empty. In the upper floors I found the Microchip office. There was only one person in the regional headquarters. Kurt Elbert is the Senior Regional Sales Manager. He and I talked for ten or fifteen minutes about various things including my reason for being there. TEN YEARS AGO I purchased a Real ICE. It programmed as expected but would not debug and failed the loopback test. At that time I was spending most of my days working long hours and traveling from coast to coast preparing for my retirement. I didn't have time to contact Microchip, take out a ticket, and go through the process of solving my problem with the Real ICE. I explained this to Kurt. In spite of the fact that Microchip no longer actively supports Real ICE, Kurt said "No problem, leave it with me and I'll have someone check it out and if there is a problem we will find you a new one". Three days later I received a new Real ICE in the mail! Thank you Kurt, Thank you Microchip!

Wayne

Well, that is amazing, isn't it?

Ioannis

In spite of their shortcomings, Microchip certainly puts forth a good effort. I looked into other options, and the only non-Microchip 8-bit I found was Texas Instruments. Perusing their data sheets, there's no way the TI can pretend to compete with PIC. Then there are the (now) Microchip Atmel versions, which in my opinion aren't as flexible nor powerful as the PIC line.

Although their software usually has a bug or 2 (MPLABX, XC8, now-defunct MPASM, MCC, etc), they update regularly, fixing issues as they are able.

I have had glitches with their relatively new ICD4 programmer. No questions asked, they send me a new one and trust me to send back the old one. I'm on my 4th one now (and it finally works as advertised).

Since no person, company, product, or service could ever be "perfect", it boils down to how well issues are handled. In my opinion, Microchip certainly ranks up there with the top 10% - 15%. That said, thank you Wayne for sharing your awesome story. Hope you enjoyed the rest of your trip as well.

I agree about that Mike. Have positive feelings about Renesas also despite the fact I will not use their MCU.

https://www.renesas.com/eu/en/produc...sors/rl78.html

Ioannis