➀ Thomas Goff organized a contest comparing the 555 timer IC with a microcontroller (PIC12) for DC motor control; ➁ The microcontroller used was an eight-bit Microchip PIC12F1840 with an internal oscillator to reduce components; ➂ Goff utilized the PIC12's built-in ADC and PWM generator, coding in MPLAB IDE with the native C library or Arduino framework; ➃ The 555 timer circuit consists of a sawtooth waveform generator and a comparator stage; ➄ The article includes a detailed write-up with schematics, videos, and results of the showdown.