can you reuse MICROCONTROLLERS

[eduard2000]

  Hi my name is Eduard I am starting robotics (I think it’s really cool) but I have a very short question.

  Can you reuse MICROCONTROLLERS?

[Steve Joblin]

most microcontrollers are reprogrammable (like hundreds of thousands of times), so the broad answer is "yes", however, there are some small very inexpensive "one shot" microcontrollers that can only be programmed one time.

Most of the common ones AVR's, Stamps, PICAXE's, etc. can be programmed many times over.

[eduard2000]

thank you very very much

[paulstreats]

look at what type of program memory it has, if it is flash or eeprom it can be reprogrammed if it is prom or eprom then it cant (eproms can be erased with uv light)

[airman00]

eproms can be erased with uv light

wow thats pretty cool

its one of those little known useful facts  ( which i now know) 

[izua]

they must have a window for the light, though.

[Asellith]

They do have a window for light. Thats why you have to be careful if your trying to find out what a microcontroller looking IC in a piece of equipment is. Manufacturers usually put labels on top so you can't find out what the chip is or just to label what software version is on it during manufacturing. I took apart an entire bell tower control unit that had lots of them in it. (mind you this is the latest greatest technology from the late 80s) I got frustrated because the system was so complex and I was reverse engineering the stupid thing just trying to fix it. So I came up with a cool system that used midi and a computer with about $200 worth of parts and now we have a new control system that works better and will last a while longer.

[frank26080115]

Remember that the acronym "OTP" stands for One Time Programmable