You wanted App notes idea for ez80F91: More in-depth usage of Ethernet to I2C / or an 8 channel, buffered Ethernet to RS485 solution. With external I2C/ SPI UARTS and lots of buffered data. Or a web page display of several tens or hundreds of ADC / Thermocouple readings. Or how to setup the PHY driver to access a fiber PHY instead of a copper PHY...and so on.

I have plants full of Fieldbus, RS485, 4-20mA loops, 10V controllers, etc. that aren't going anywhere. They are all either too hot or too cold for anything off-the-shelf, and most anything RF is useless in a room full of steel pipe. So any app note dealing with realistic industrial, "greasy" bridging apps is a big plus in my book.

Tom Ormiston wrote:
The parts you mention are 32bit and 16bit parts where this is still an 8bit part.

So ? The parts I quoted set price points, Peripherals, and Vcc ranges for customers to choose from.
If you offer a less-flexible part, then it needs to be cheaper to get traction.
Will these new Encore parts be under $1 @ 10K+

There is an opening for a USB part, that has regulator on board, and ideally, can do Host/Device.

If just device, it needs to be under $1 as that Renesas part can do Hoat/Device for $1.
A USB bridge user does not care (initially) what core the chip uses, and you can follow Silabs/MicroChip/Freescale lead and offer a pre-programmed part code that does fixed USB tasks.

Microchip have new USB parts for Xtal-less operation
PIC18F2xK50 (1.8V – 5.5V)
PIC16F145x (1.8V – 5.5V) - notice again the Wide Vcc offering (same as already seen in Z51F)

Update on the ZGate development kits -
Mouser has stock and DigiKey should have stock in the next week or so.

Thank you for the ideas on the eZ80F91, I will work on getting them added to be developed.

So what about this Zgate - it looks like an ez80F91 with the internal ROM loaded with some code?? The internal ROM is where we put our flash loader.

Or is it different hardware?

Can a regular ez80F91 just load the internal ROM with the ZGate code and there you go?? Will the code run on the ez80F91 dev kits we already have??

There's 75 pieces in sock anywhere - when will this be available for production?

Is this the RZK code from India?? Is it field-tested?? What is the longest up-time so far???

The ZGate does indeed utilize the eZ80F91 acclaim plus part with the ZGATE binary pre-loaded in the internal flash. The ZGATE binary is only available on the ZGATE part. You need to be cautious that you do not inadvertently over-write the internal flash on the ZGATE part!

The Embedded Firewall APIs are incorporated in the ZTP version 2.4 for implementation. To use the embedded firewall on the ZGATE part with your current ZTP/RZK code, you will need to add a few calls, configuration files and headers, modify memory addresses (internal flash is no longer available), modify the target and recompile with the latest ZTP stack. We do include a sample project for reference.

The current eZ80F91 dev kits do not have the ZGATE binaries loaded in the flash, so the so firewall will not run on your current dev kits. RZK/ZTP 2.4 will still work, just without access to the firewall APIs.

The Embedded firewall is not from India and the RZK/ZTP has been updated from the previous version. I will check into the longest up-time that we have.

The ZGate part is ready for production.

So if I've got 1750 boards with an ez80F91 already installed, and I want to turn them into ZGates, can I burn the new code into internal flash?

I notice the cost difference between the different versions of the ZGate part up to Premium version is like 20 cents. And about 25 cents more than a regular ez80F91. So is it possible to upgrade the units we have without having to re-install chips? Can we purchase the code for 25 cents per chip?

Also, we use the internal rom for our flash loader already - and the ZGate API be re-compiled to live on external flash, with the rest of our code??