[Chris Hibner]

I agree with Ken on this one. People had a bit of a rough time making the switch to the new processor.

I also feel that the PIC was a bad choice (however, I still feel it is a big improvement over last year's controller). I would have rather seen IFI go to an HC11 or HC12 that comes pre-loaded with a real-time operating system Kernel. We use this type of thing for our custom electronics and it is actually easier to work with than the PIC on the IFI controller.

I don't think teams will have so much trouble next year. There will be a lot of lessons learned from this year, a lot of whitepapers on the subject, and the rookie teams will have all of this knowledge and experience at their disposal before next year's build season starts. Let's see how next year goes before we condemn this year's system.