Err, try the Microchip website. They have free downloadable C compilers for all their ranges, they are just crippled in terms of code size optimisations, but otherwise are fully functional. I believe there are (legal) ways around the crippling on the GCC compilers.
HiTech or GCC flavours:
Dave.
-- ================================================ Check out my Electronics Engineering Video Blog & Podcast: http://www.eevblog.com
The PICkit 2 'does what it says on the box', reliably programming the vast majority of PIC10Fxxx, PIC12Fxxx, PIC16Fxxx, PIC18Fxxx and PIC24Fxxx parts. It also supports basic debugging (register inspection, single step and single hardware breakpoint) on all parts that have native silicon support for ICD (a few PIC16, nearly all PIC18 and Pic24) Compatible Debug 'headers' are available for most of the rest. A few of the latest parts are not supported, but there is supposed to be a final update later this year and the firmware, stand-alone GUI and command line utility are open source.
The PICkit 3 is supposed to be the successor to the PICkit 2. It is still very buggy and I would NOT consider buying it as my sole programmer yet. When it is fully debugged it will probably be faster than a PICKit 2 and may have better features, but at the moment there is a strong suspicion it has serious hardware problems and the software lacks many features PICkit 2 users expect and is not exactly stable.
With either you need some way of connecting to your chosen PIC. You can 'roll your own' ICSP hook-up or buy a kit that includes a demo/development board.
Avoid the 'PICkit 2 Starter Kit' DV164120 as the supplied 'Low Pin Count Demo Board' for 8/14/20 pin mid-range PICs does NOT support any PIC that has built-in debugging support. The bundled PICkit 2 is of course ICD capable but the complete kit doesn't get you there. There are 18 pin and 28 pin DIP demo boards available that you can plug a debug capable PIC straight into but they aren't bundled as a kit and dont have a nice set of tutorials.
The 'PICkit 2 Debug Express' DV164121 is usable for debugging 'out the box' but the demo board has a soldered on surface mount PIC16F887, with a surface mount prototyping area and all thru-hole pads for off board connections at 2mm pitch :-( so can be a pain to hook up to your own breadboarded experimental circuits.
There is one other kit that rarely shows up if you are looking for a PICkit 2: the 'PICDEM Lab Development Kit' DM163035. From Microchip's site:
It is bundled with a PICkit 2. One of the supplied PICs is debug capable. The solderless breadboard area is large enough to take 28 or 40 pin PICs jumpered to the programming signals from one of the sockets so it will do to program all DIP pics the PICKit 2 supports.
You should also check out this link:
A PICkit 2 (or 3) compatible demo board with a ZIF socket for programming/testing all DIP PICs that the PICkit 2 supports up to 40 pins, on board regulators, 6 LEDS and I2C/SSP level translators. (It is definitely superior to Microchip's ZIF socket adapter for the ICD series which itself requires an adaptor to connect to a PICkit 2 or 3_ They also make an enhanced PICkit 2 clone with a very good reputation.
-- Ian Malcolm. London, ENGLAND. (NEWSGROUP REPLY PREFERRED) ianm[at]the[dash]malcolms[dot]freeserve[dot]co[dot]uk [at]=@, [dash]=- & [dot]=. *Warning* HTML & >32K emails --> NUL:
In my book, if it's intentionally crippled, it automatically disqualifies the product as "decent".
I seem to remember they were open source, and all you had to do was to make a small modification to the code and then compile it. I don't have the knowledge to do so, and as long as I have JAL, I don't have any incentive to try and figure it out.
-- RoRo
Could you expand on ICD? Does this mean that there are built-in debug registers in the chip?
I had naively assumed that the single step and breakpoint facility were achieved in some way by reprogramming the Flash memory on-the-fly, relying on the fact that even the 100,000 rewrite limit would not be exceeded.
I dunno about that. They are among the cheapest ways for hobbyists to do small projects requiring modest amounts of data storage and i/o for minimal cost.
You might need removable links or live with the restrictions. I find it useful YMMV.
Be careful what you wish for.
I favour on site mass spec and FTIR as the best tests for interesting organic molecules - which from the colours in the gas giants and their moons are almost certainly present. The big question is are they sufficiently far down the track of self organisation to count as life.
Self organising catalytic reactions are more common than is generally supposed. One of the simplest and prettiest is the BZ bromate/malonic acid/cerium mix which is so tolerant that it is demonstrable in a high school lab. Very cute behaviour when unstirred in a shallow dish.
Poeple have already done liquid logic with the BZ reaction...and they are pushing the boundaries with wet chemistry modelling of neurons.
Regards, Martin Brown
On a sunny day (Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:14:45 +0000) it happened Martin Brown wrote in :
That is true, but if somebody wants to wire up one, then they should know about 5V logic levels, 3.3V logic levels, all that stuff, else they cannot even *use* the PIC. So if they know that, then they know about parport interface. These days it is very simple, you can google parport PC on the net, and get all the info you want. In the early days I had documentation from IBM, that was only accessible to us.
Yes, I used a switch in one case. You know about the expression 'in circuit programming'? I work exactly the opposite way: I use 'in programmer circuiting'. LOL. What that means is that I leave the PIC in my noppp programmer, and simply solder the wires to my circuit under test to it:
Na, we are probably seeded by space resistant bugs, if we are not descendents of some. Mosquitos survived on the outside of the ISS for month, the eggs came out OK. I will not go into how lawyers will survive in space here ...
Interesting.
I like
"Somebody" wrote in news:hm5kdp$ltd$1 @speranza.aioe.org:
inspection,
Pic24)
Yes, on a typical ICD enabled PIC16 part, there are two registers associated with debugger control: the ICKBUG and BIGBUG registers. ICKBUG contains the high bits of the breakpoint address and BIGBUG contains the low byte. ICKBUG also contains flags: INBUG, FREEZ and SSTEP that control single stepping and whether or not peripherals are frozen while in the debug executive. INBUG is read only and indicates if debugging is in progress. Debugging requires a minimum of one level of stack and a few locations of RAM are also reserved. For more details see the Microchip data sheet DS51242A.
No, FLASH memory (by definition) can only be erased in pages. I suppose it would be *possible* to write a monitor program that saved the rest of th page before changing the instruction at the breakpoint address but the PICs that can write their own FLASH at runtime usually have debug silicon anyway. It cant be done externally as the program counter is shared between running and as the current address when programming the chip and it is reset in between.
-- Ian Malcolm. London, ENGLAND. (NEWSGROUP REPLY PREFERRED) ianm[at]the[dash]malcolms[dot]freeserve[dot]co[dot]uk [at]=@, [dash]=- & [dot]=. *Warning* HTML & >32K emails --> NUL
To get my decade-old PIC skills back in tune, I recently bought a "PIC18F4xK20 Starter Kit" (14-00807). It comes with a PICkit 2 and a pretty nice demo board--18F46K20, 64x128 OLED display, thermometer, flash, 32.768 kHz crystal oscillator, ICD and serial headers.
A pretty nice demo board overall.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal ElectroOptical Innovations 55 Orchard Rd Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 845-480-2058 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
I like Dr. Lovelock's approach, which works well if there is any substantial amount of live involved. "All chemistry works in either direction, releasing or absorbing energy in the process. Look for chemical compounds on the higher potential energy side of the equation. If life exists, so will an abundance of those products."
He points to Earth, which has an abundance of molecular oxygen in its atmosphere as an obvious case. That wouldn't be possible without life. It would get consumed in a natural lifeless situation here, turning into oxides of various kinds.
He recommends it isn't even necessary to visit. One can figure this out just using spectrographic analysis, where there is an atmosphere to "look through," anyway.
Likens the idea to looking around at a landscape and either seeing all the boulders near the bottom of nearby peaks or sitting at the tops of those peaks. If you see most everything in its natural condition near the bottoms, then there is nothing there rolling the boulders back up. If you see boulders at precarious positions everywhere, something or someone is putting them back there. Life.
Jon
on,
)There is on-chip debug hardware; the low pin count devices don't have it, though. They need a debug adapter with a special version of the chip. They aren't expensive,
Leon
On a sunny day (Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:03:38 -0800) it happened Jon Kirwan wrote in :
Follow the link Dr. Levion's site too: to
Thanks. Downloaded, read, marked, learnt and inwardly digested!
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.