Most of the manufacturers have "Starter Kits" which usually include a development breadboard, power supply utilities, (some include a C compiler), and many have an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) which act as an editor / debugger / complier interface ... some also do emulation.
The PIC starter Kits are pretty good, and cover pretty much everything from basic chip programming up to RF/wireless. They have a kit for US$35.00 thats pretty good, and attaches directly to a USB port. Half of the board is for build-up and can be detached.
The Atmel starter kits are also very good and cover most of their product range.
Motorola has a kit for their HC11 (12 too, I think) ... comes with IDE and C compiler.
Zilog has kits for their Z80 Acclaim! and Encore! chips. Both come with IDE and C compiler ... the Encore! kit comes with an Ethernet switch (the Encore! has a built-in Ethernet MAC). The Zilog chips are pretty zippy and have many "advanced" features (for a microcontroller ... )
The BASIC Stamp and clones are also pretty good for starters, but the chips are ~$35.00 each ... not cheap compared to the discreet MCs from the other products. There is a Stamp that programs in Java, but I think it's like ~$65.00 a chip. You can get BASIC Stamp kits through Radio Shack and places like Fry's with experimenter kits.
If you really want to jump in heavy, check out the BlackFin processor and kit. The Blackfin is used in things like audio / video processors ... very fast annd has it's own DSP.
Microchip (PIC) will sample some chips to you for free, the IDE is downloadable (free) from their site. The only real expense is the programmer ... the Microchip programmers start at ~$100, but there are third party programmers that can be built from plans for ~$10-15.00. The C compiler can be downloaded and used for free, but it crippled (# of lines of code ... something like that).
I use the CCS compiler for PIC, it has a pretty large library routines for most of the common interfaces (Dallas sensors, clock chips, AD/DA, etc). Their top package is the entire compiler suite (12, 14, 16, 18 series chips) and IDE. They also have compilers for Linux.
If you're looking at the PIC and Atmel ... check out the Warp13 programmer. It's also about $100.00 assembled, but can program all PICS, and most AVRs (DIP form factors standard, I think you can get adapters for other package styles). I think it's also available as a PCB or build-it kit for less.
Aside from the manufacturers direct, you can get most of this stuff through Mouser (
www.mouser.com ... very large catalog), and you can also order the other chips (sensors, RT clocks, mux, etc.) and only pay the one shipping fee.
As mentioned, you can get gcc packages that will do Intel 8051-type chips and Atmel, and it's free ... usually in a *nix/BSD environment ... or Cygwin (*nix / POSIX environment under Windows ... ).
Finally, check out the web sites for the manufactureres you're most interested in. Many /most / all have some sort of "road show" presentations they do all over the country. They frequently give out product (Microchip lays out tables full of almost everything they produce ... all for free) and also usually raffle off things like programmers, debugger / ICE modules, and dev kits.
BTW: I'm also "not an EE" and learned from scratch ... it's not too bad learning if you have even a little electronic and / or programming background. Books and hobby sites are a great help.
Have fun ....
Scott
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