Atmel Corporation: Simply Amazing

I'm sure many of you are already well aware of AVR Studio but I just had to say that from the viewpoint of a beginner, this IDE is absolutely amazing. The ability to emulate has allowed me to learn without having to write countless errors to the FLASH memory. Best of all, it's free! It'll definitely pay off for Atmel when I start ordering more and more processors from them for all the projects I'll be working on. This and passing on my recommendations to others is the absolute least I can do. I had my heart set on the PIC's before I came to this newsgroup so I pass on my sincere gratitude for enlightening another newbie.

Sean

Like you, I am a newbie.

After speaking to some guys, I was advised to go the way of PICs. I wanted to start with AVRs initially but I've listen to these guys. I have since ordered the programmer.

I hope I've made the right decision.... I really like the help for newbies offered on avrfreaks though.

There is a free PIC Studio as well called MPLAB which can be downloaded off Microchip's website.

best o luck

Cool, you'll be up and running soon. Which programmer did you order?

Don't worry, you haven't made any mistakes. When I was getting started, I was worried about which I should choose. I chose PICs and have been quite satisfied. Once you know one, you'll see that the other is not that much different, each one has it's own quirks and pitfalls, neither is really "ideal".

That's right, Microchip makes basicly the same toolset available for free.

Be sure and sign up for the mailing list at

michael brown

The AVR has a nicer instruction set than the PIC does, but the PIC is pretty popular and there are plenty of books on it and help available. The earlier PICs were quite quirky, but some of that has gone away - especially with the PIC-18 family.

Sean,

I just began my journey into embedded. I'm enrolled in the embedded certificate program at UC Irvine Extension. The intro class uses the STK500 and STK502 development kits from Atmel. I am having a blast! Having done just general application programming for 8 years (most of it in Java), I'm finally starting to feel like a REAL programmer again.

Another class I'm taking is Embedded System Architecture. We're using Altera's UP2 student board. It's got a ton of doodads on it, and we're learning how to use Verilog HDL to design processor cores (I think!) to download onto the board.

I can't wait to work full time with hardware and software, maybe Embedded device drivers! Java and web programming is so boring to me now, I can't wait to go back to C and maybe a little asm!

My ultimate goal (besides a new career): emulate Hayes over Telnet between Commodore 64's so that vintage telcom software can use the internet instead of the phone lines WITHOUT using an intermediate computer and null modem. Some have already made ethernet possible on the C64, but I don't think they've quite done what I want to do: C64 -> Hayes -> Telnet -> Hayes ->

C64. I figure even if I don't get it to work, my brain will swell at least

2 sizes to fill the voids caused by high level programming!

Check out avrfreaks.com and avrbeginners.net for projects, knowledge bases, and all around gurus (please search archives before posting questions).

So much to learn, so little time, argggg!!!

-microman (aka whtwrx aka Jeff)

instead

least

Take one PC, and one C64 with an RS232 card

Write PC software to read from the comport and create a connection somewhere when an Ip address is dialed.

Keep connection open untill DTR is pulled low

ATD64.64.64.64.1234 where 1234 is the port number and 64.64.64.64 is the ip address

Sounds like about 20 lines of code. That is something I suspect you can easily write in Java.

Ralph

One thing that worries me is the lack of a free high level compiler for the PIC. Or is there one which I'm not aware of?

For the avr you have gcc-avr. What free C compiler is there for the PIC?

What do you mean by nicer instruction set? Could you please elaborate. Nicer in what way.

By the way I signed on to the piclist and my mailbox is now being flooded by a ton of messages I don't understand.

Why not just have a newsgroup for the pic instead of a flood fest :) I've looked at comp.arch.embedded.piclist but i'm not sure its the exact same as the mailing list.

Are there any PIC resources for beginners you could recommend. Specifically with the 877 chip?

JAL (Just Another Language) isn't C, but is popular for PICs, free, and easier to use:

Leon

Nicer in lots of ways, including:

Modern, not 30 years old RISC

32 registers Faster (one instruction per clock) Better suited to compilers etc.

Leon

On the PIC, just about averything you do has to go through the W register. Not so on the AVR where there is no one special register (what is normally called an Accumulator). for operations. On the PIC, you spend a lot of instructions moving stuff into/out of W.

Eariler PICs also had some weirdness as far as subroutines went. Memory was divided into 512 word pages and you could use only the first 256 words of a page as a destination of a CALL instruction (bit 9 of the PC was cleared).

Not true. Thew PIC does have a weird instruction set, rather unconventional and hard to use. The AVR has a classical instruction set of "the old days" =-}.

Their both RISC. That makes the CPUs cheap. The cheapness should be your main concern and whether they are CISC or RISC is really not important.

Sweet. This makes passing parameters via the registers easy to do and fast to access when you get there. (Pascal style passing).

Clocks don't count. Right now I think AVR has a slight lead on speed, but that is more a matter of fabrication than pure architectural design. If MicroChip saw a market on going faster, they definately could. Most embedded projects just don't need the speed.

Definately! The 16XXX and 12XXX Microchip CPUs didn't have a proper stack and are overly segmented in code memory. The AVRs are easier for a compiler to generate code for and thus the code for the chips comes out cleaner and more efficient.

Mmmm. ETC. I don't think either processor has Extended Trancendential Coding yet. =-}

In the choice between PIC and AVR I've always gone with the PICs for the past 8 years. They are cheaper and more plentiful. Never had much problem with them, either. I'm starting to use the AVRs and they look good. Their both very nice.

Tom

pretty

It's a while since I wrote PIC assembly (or AVR assembly for that matter - I tend to use mostly C on the AVR), but I think a few good measures of the "niceness" of the instruction set and processor architecture are the amount of macros needed to make the assembler readable and useable, the number of post-its stuck to the edge of my screen reminding me of basic assembler constructions such as for doing 16-bit signed/unsigned comparisons, and the ratio of debugging time to program writing time. The AVR wins hands down in every case - similar to the mps430 (which I would also describe as "nice" - even "nicer" than the AVR).

STK500

instead

least

bases,

I feel the exact same way as you do and once I get into the University of Maryland, I'll be taking a lot more low-level programming and hardware courses. No offense to anybody but web/database development is just too easy. I started to feel like a robot. I love creating my own devices.

also you can use these freely available gnu-tools, programmers, libs ...

Michael

--
Remove the sport from my address to obtain email
www.enertex.de - Innovative Systemlösungen der Energie- und Elektrotechnik

to

my

heart

I haven't gotten the GCC add-on's yet but I'm planning on giving it a try in the near future.