8OD – Arduino form-factor Intel 8086

You can get an 8086 for $1.49 from Unicorn Electronics.

http://www.unicornelectronics.com/IC/8000.html

Availability of 8086's is not an issue when building something like this. It's everything else.

There's seems to be a clone from Harris Semiconductors, starting at ~$5....

https://octopart.com/search?q=CP80C86

I think the criticism is that Arduino is "softwareized hardware". The way you build up an Arduino-system is by fitting pre-engineered modules together in a well-defined general purpose framework.

I'll venture a guess that the average Arduino project is several orders of magnitude more expensive and more complex than a purpose-build non-software electronics project. It's just that the complexity is hidden away in extremely well tested, well supported and well understood chips (such as the 8086 and the Atmel chips in Arduinos) and while $20 is orders of magnitude more than a few cents, it's still just $20.

Software people lament the unhackability of modern computers because they are highly integrated and requires a deep stack of drivers and operating systems to every turn on -- an Arduino board probably represents roughly the same loss of control to a hardware guy who knows how to do cool things with an oscillator and a couple of transistors.

Also, Arduino is cool even when you know what's happening below the abstraction.

You get a very cheap fully-integrated fully-tested small-form-factor board with SMD components factory-soldered in, a flashed bootloader and great support (I got an Arduino Due with a fried DAC replaced). All that with an easy-to-use IDE with some cool libraries, where you can still use the low level stuff if you need to. It's also better for a much faster prototyping before you develop your final product.

So it's the best for beginners (as you said, it lowers the barrier of entry for EE) and also useful for electronics-savvy people. Is that bad? I don't think so.

And in Arduino's case, it's open hardware/source if you want to do it yourself!

Same goes for Raspberry Pi, which I don't even know if I could do myself (are Broadcom SoC's datasheets even publicly available without an NDA?)

I completely agree.

Especially the "streamlined" programming, with the wealth of existing modules for all kind of peripherals make it incredibly easy to prototype most things. In that regard, it's also a very good replacement for the "parallel printer port" to which most hobbyists used to attach their simple peripherals in the old days.

And for the crowd that needs everything a little "less dumbed down", you get eval-boards for selected 8- and 32bit MCUs for so little money... on which then you can run your handcrafted assembler code to your heart's content.

Now, if we could only get the FPGA world away from their ugly proprietary synthesis tools...

>>These things are getting to easy, it's not really geeky!

In defense of these opinions, we need at-least somebody in the next generation to understand how the lowest level of technology works. I am told that everybody in my field built a radio communication system in high-school, now its a project for a senior level class.

If you learn how to implement a PIC you've basically learned how to implement all PICs, so those giant parametric charts of on board device tradeoffs are all open to you. Need 3 CANBUS and 12 bit A/D, just swap a chip. Also lets be realistic, some families are weirder than others and there are always gotchas but if you can make a 68hc11 work you can make a AVR work or any other microcontroller ever made in the past or future.

Or you can buy someone elses product and play within that timid little silo and never, ever, think of expanding outside that rigid narrow little silo, always suffering under someone elses tradeoff decisions. And if all you ever do is blink a LED you'll never know the difference.

Its like the difference between learning to be a carpenter who can make any shape of wood out of any species of wood and any wood finish, although maybe its a lot of work and takes awhile and the end result of the first hundred tries is best utilized as woodstove fuel, vs playing with a purchased bucket of lincoln logs and deluding yourself that you're now a woodworker just like the old time woodworkers, because, hey, I'm a maker, making wood stuff! "Hey look, I made a cabin using lincoln logs! A whole cabin in less time than old time apprentices took to learn how to nail together a little wooden box. Isn't progress great?"

My only complaint are when things are productized with an Arduino or equivalent shoved into them when the cost could be drastically cut by using a lower powered and cheaper set of parts.

It depends. Newer remakes (such as the 80C86) will use less power, but if you use original parts, then they're going to suck power.