PIC and EEPROM modules

Some design considerations.

How many pins do you have left on the 16F84 ?

How much code space do you have left in the 16F84 ?

The 16F84 does _not_ have an SPI or I2C controller on board. You will need to bit-bang the lines to the external EEPROM.

With these assumption, what can you do with your design ?

Also, getting any data from your PC into the EEPROM. Do you have an external programmer, do you want to code another PIC to interface to a serial/parallel port on your PC.

Do you want to remove the EEPROM from the target board to reprogram it ?

All these things can be done, you need to make a decision about what you want to do.

One last thing, are you programming in assembly or C ?

donald

Typically I2C is cheaper, slower, more complex to implement and uses only two pins (with bus pull-up resistors). SPI is simple, fast, uses more I/Os and the chips might cost more. I use both.. it just depends on the requirements. There's also a third architecture (Microwire) which is similar to SPI (eg. the old 93C46).

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it\'s the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

Hi Spehro

Do you have a link or something for a simple diagram and tutorial? can you program any of these EEPROM modules with data using your PC? Or can you only write to them with the PIC?

Try googling for PIC I2C master or SPI master (you'll want the micro to be master and the EEPROM to be slave). Google on the I2C standard (from Philips) as well.. there is more than one possible speed etc.

These are chips, not modules, typically in something along the lines of a SOIC-8, DIP-8, SOT-23-5 or whatever.

You can program them from a PC using an appropriate programmer device, or possibly by hacks on the old-style parallel port and a bit of software. Look around, you'll find some stuff.

Here's a suitable I2C 1Mbit part:

And an SPI part:

(in this case the SPI part is cheaper).

And a cheaper I2C part from Atmel:

If data integrity is of importance to you, you may wish to use one that has hardware write protection.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

On a sunny day (Wed, 9 Jan 2008 05:45:19 -0800 (PST)) it happened snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in :

Here is a small program in C to write via the part port to a 24C16 EEPROM. It can also do bigger EEPROMs, scroll down to 'eeprog'.

This needs only 3 external components (2 resistors, 1 diode). Been 6 years since I wrote that, dont't remember anything more, but at least once I also had PIC 16F84 asm code to read that EEPROM.

Since the F84 doesn't do either in hardware, you'll have to bit bang them. I2C will take two pins and SPI will take three at least. SPI is faster and probably easier to write the code for. If you can, I suggest looking at the

16F88 as a pin compatible replacement with many more features. Price is cheaper even.

I have some code I could give you that will bit-bang I2C to an EEPROM. It's not a strict implementation though, it doesn't check for ACKs. Outside that, it worked great for months on end in a data logger project I was tinkering on.

Even if you don't upgrade to a remotely modern PIC to get builtin SPI or I2C, it's worth downloading the datasheets because they explain those busses very clearly. AVR used to be a little worse in that area, but I know the Atmega88/48 datasheet also has good explanations of those busses.

Personally I'd look into using a MMC card if it's a logger project. Then you can read the data with a PC.

--
Ben Jackson AD7GD

http://www.ben.com/

Hi

I really have a quite simple program. So I'm flexible on changing pics etc. I need to do something like a clock which plays a different tune every 15 minutes. The tunes are stored in the memory. So I want to use a computer to program the tunes into the memory module. If that doesn't work I'm willing to program another chip to program the memory, but I'd prefer to use the PC straight on the memory module. I use a K149 USB hardware pic programmer. I use assembly (trying to keep it elementary). I'm more than willing to remove the EEPROM to reprogram.

BTW: I know the DE command to program pic EEPROM from the PC. Can I somehow program the pic memory RAM that way as well? It's REALLY difficult to search in google for DE, DT and other 2character commands. Does anyone have a link of how to program pic memory RAM (in a similar way that you program EEPROM on the pic)

Thanks!

Ok,

The design spec is to read a EEPROM device, thats been programmed somewhere else.

To help a little you can look at:

What does the DE command have to do with the EEPROM ??

If you picked out an EEPROM device and looked at its data sheet, you would know by now.

good luck

donald