On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 13:09:44 -0700, Darren Harris wrote:

I know nothing at all about PDAs or programming. But from what I can
tell, it wouldn't suit my purpose anyway. I was visualizing two
displays(like the big red numbers on those easy to read digital
clocks). For power consumption reasons I assumed that this timer would
have to be something I'd plug into an outlet. I could settle for a
timer that would increment at 1/100th of a second instead of 1/60th.
So I guess that would mean that I'd need 8 decimal places for the
display that would show the split times.

Anyway, from what I gather, what I want to do is too complicated,
going by the recommdations so far.

Oh, that's only because everybody jumped on that pocket thing.
All you need is a clock oscillator, a counter, a few latches
and display drivers, and some gating logic.

You push "start", that gates on the counter (so you get a full cycle
at start time - the oscillator is free-running), and then your "time 1"
button latches the current count into display 1, your "time 2" button
latches display 2, and so on. You can add displays all day long, if you
want.

Maybe a dozen parts, if you do it all with "discrete" chips.

Or perhaps there is a way to use a PDA hidden in a specially built box
where it would output to the kind of displays I need. Is this
plausible?

Yabbut, it's way overkill, or maybe "underkill." ;-) Like I said, you can
do it with a few counters and latches. For a digital weenie like me, it's
just a matter of connecting the dots. :-)

Chips you might want to look at:
74HC393 - dual decade counter
74HC273 - 8-bit D FF (or edge-triggered latch)

Oh, yeah, you'll need some kind of BCD-to-7-segment decoders, but you
already knew that, right? ;-)

Have Fun!
Rich