Throughout the entire time I had to beg for information, thanks to the French team's unwillingness to provide accurate information, and often was fed mis-information just so I wouldn't give up on the ATMEL part.

Today, none of my clients use ATMEL devices of any sort. I don't recommend them no matter how much less costly the ATMEL parts are, because I don't wish to be associated with a company that does business in that way, or its products. If they ever do choose an ATMEL device, I won't be responsible.

My "Atmel no more" experience comes from the first '51 they introduced. I found a malfunction of the chip re simultaneous interrupts. I reported to management (the stupidity of which is discussed in another thread) that we needed another manufacturers chip. Management (the stupidity of which is discussed in another thread) declared "that can not be, no manufacturer would sell a defective chip". I called, then wrote Atmel and got a letter back "there is no such defect". So I lost a job because I could not "fix the problem". Lo and behold, a year or so later, the malfucntion I reported did show up in the errata sheet published by Atmel.

I do not expect every newly released chip to be perfect, few are, but I DO expect a manufacturer to take reports of malfunctions (especially when supported by code showing it) seriously and not out of hand reject them.

Erik