At one point the chip database was editable. No-one really bothered to update it. So then I tried doing it myself but trying to catalog all the derivatives out there is a huge project for one person if it isn't a full-time job.

Right now we are using data provided by Keil Software, though there are some errors in my importation of the data and a newer version of the data is available to 8052.com from Keil but hasn't been imported yet. That's been my fault as I haven't had time to deal with it. Once integrated, the idea was for 8052.com to automatically update off of Keil once per week.

Now we could go back to user-maintained/editable chips database. But if we do that then we depend on the users to keep the database up to date. I don't see any technical way that users could maintain it "sometimes" but that we could get data from Keil Software, too. It seems like it's an "either it's user-editable or we get data from Keil."

So which is the more reliable source of data? I don't doubt the reliability of the members here, but again, the database was editable once upon a time and the only one doing any editing was me.

So, show of hands... how many people would be interested in helping maintain the chips database if it were editable? Perhaps it could be broken up by manufacturers so certain members are in charge of maintaining the entries for a given manufacturer. That'd still be a lot of work but a lot less than one person trying to enter the data for every derivative out there.

Or I can just fix the bugs in the importation process and we can use the data from Keil.

Regards,
Craig Steiner
8052.com Webmaster