Beginning PICs

BTW, I also have no knowledge of circuits (I know, I know, I'll get there) so I'm looking for solutions with very limited soldering/building.

Why torture yourself with a PIC? Start with Atmel AVR. Go to

Get WinAVR package for free. Contains free C compiler that is a port of GCC. Get the STK500 kit.

I suggest you look into AVRs. They are much nicer to program and a bit faster to boot.

cheers,

Al

have a look at:

this may help

Don...

--
Don McKenzie
E-Mail Contact Page:       http://www.e-dotcom.com/ecp.php?un=Dontronics

RS-232 to VGA. Many resolutions http://www.dontronics.com/micro-vga.html
USB to RS232 Converter that works http://www.dontronics.com/usb_232.html

PICs are very cheap. There's a webring called piclist that has lots of info. I don't know the AVRs but if you're in assembly programming PICs only have 30 odd instructions which are very easy to work with (IMHO). I use them for low-level realtime stuff where cycles count. They do about 5M instructions/second without overclocking. There's a free develeopment tool from Microchip called MPLAB. I'm not sure there's a free C compiler, never looked. There is a free other compiler called JAL which is Pascal-like (see

-> tools -> Jal).

Mat Nieuwenhoven

Mat Nieuwenhoven schrieb:

There is cc5x, free for hobbyists, with some limitations (1k instructions, but you can work around. Look:

Support in MPLab is included.

Michael

bender schrieb:

It's a good intention, but you can't prevent this. Be not frustrated ;-)

That is my Prog-HW (Less than 10 ? or $):

A good and useful SW for many HW can be found there:

The dev-suite can be downloaded from the microchip web site for free. C-Compiler: cc5x for PIC 12F/16F or C18 (from Microchip) for 18F. Some other languages are available.

If you are a hobbyist, look around the web. There are many projects, also some to realize a circuit for development. (But it's not my way.)

My best kit is a breadbord ;-)

More questions? Michael

I agree fully with this. Many years ago I used Z80/8085, liked them. More lately I used HC11, loved it. Then I needed something cheap and small, found PIC and have regretted it since. When I have used up the chips I have bought I will look at something different.

I looked back at a 16F628 project I wrote in assembler in 2002 - a keyboard morse generator that decodes the data and clock lines of a standard keyboard. What an untidy mess of a chip - banked RAM, no way to pop the return address off the stack just for starters. I'm not far from testing a rewrite of it for the

68HC908, which is a joy to programme. I don't care how efficient PICs can be - they're so ugly.

--
Ian Stirling, G4ICV, AB2GR, Long Valley, New Jersey, USA.
Email address is not valid: contact details are on that
domain's web site.

I like the Z8 from Zilog. The eval kits are cheap

Are there any Linux-hosted toolchains for the Z8?

I've looked at the data sheets, and they seem pretty decent. The gnu AVR toolchains is also supposed to be good.

--
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I know things about
                                  at               TROY DONAHUE that can't
                               visi.com            even be PRINTED!!

I'm a fan of the PIC. Mainly for cost reasons. I understand that there is better microcontrollers out there but it's usually reflected in the cost. Another reason I like the PIC is because they are so wide spread in use. You ask a question about a PIC on the newsgroups and your almost guaranteed an answer within ten minutes. Their new MPLAB simulator is free and fun to play with, and it gives you a good understanding of how assembly language is executed.

I think they are currently the number one selling micro. Surpassing Motorola a few years back. So they must be doing something right.

Thomas

There is more choice than there used to be, at the low end.

Now you have Atmel, Freescale, Philips, SiliconLabs, TI, ST, Zilog all making usefull small, microcontrollers. The most widely sourced 8 bit core is 80C51, with 5 of 7 of the above offering 80c51 variants amongst their lineups. In larger cores, ARM is the most widely sourced, with 5 of 7 of the above also offering ARM variants.

-jg

Other PIC 16 series torture methods: o No way to read constant from FLASH other than a return literal (retlw). Awkward at best. o Bank switching of RAM to get to variables. Difficult to keep track of and wasteful of FLASH and time. o Multiply and Divide are not available in the most popular 16 series. o Bank switch of FLASH not as bad as RAM bank switching, but a pain none the less. o Only one interrupt vector o Only 35 instructions are to rudimentary. Use of Microchip supplied macros highly recommended.

That said, their tech support is very good.

"DirtDobber" a écrit dans le message de news: c0ORe.3696$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr33.news.prodigy.com...

This is relevant : it can be learned quickly ;-) Too many instructions isn't good to.

--

-Stan

Hi Tom,

Thomas Magma schrieb:

Me too :-) And I want to throw in 3 more arguments:

1) I have never seen more ESD/spikes/bad supply robust micros than the PICs, which makes it easier to do applications which should *not* reset every now and then. Forget that with AVRs. May be the main reason, PICs are widely used in automotive areas. 2) Programming AVR chips is a mess. Once you muck up the fuses, you have to tinker around to repair that. *Much* easier with PICs. 3) Free C compilers are available for PICs. No need to bother with banked RAM.

I would install one of the free C compilers on top of MPLAB. You should also purchase a ICD2 debugger (maybe there are DIY projects also). This makes life much easier :-)

No need. A bit of breadbord and a soldering iron is all you need.

greetz, Wolfgang

--
From-address is Spam trap
Use: wolfgang (dot) mahringer (at) sbg (dot) at

You don't _have_ to use all of the available instructions in an architecture. If you feel you must, you can probably get by using only 35 instructions on most processors -- you just end up with less efficient code. ;)

--
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  They don't hire
                                  at               PERSONAL PINHEADS,
                               visi.com            Mr. Toad!

--> 42 Andrew M

solution

industry (Z8,

situations.

--> 42 Andrew M

I'll second the esd/spike/bad supply observation. I've even plugged pics in backwards (Vcc pin to ground and the GND pin to +5 volts) and had them survive. Never seen any other micro do that.

I'd look at the C18 compiler from Microchip. It's a little non-standard, but it works. And the student edition is free. With C18 and MPLAB's simulator you can do a pretty good job of debugging before you even think of loading code into a chip. Of course that limits you to the 18Fxxx family of parts, but they are way easier to use than the

16Fxxx parts. Now if they would just do a 8 pin version...

regards,

Mark