gnupic: Re: [gnupic] gnupic and PIC Programmer and Test Bed Kit (Australia)
Subject:
Re: [gnupic] gnupic and PIC Programmer and Test Bed Kit (Australia)
From:
Martyn Welch ####@####.####
Date:
15 Jun 2005 12:05:02 +0100
Message-Id: <200506151204.58669.welchm@comp.lancs.ac.uk>
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Hi Stuart,
I guess I have a little advise:
- ------ Original message ------
On Wednesday 15 Jun 2005 10:57, Stuart Woolford wrote:
> Hello,
> This is my first post to the list.
> I live in Australia, and am about to begin exploring pic programming
> (namely the pic16f84/a, which I guess is a good one for beginners?
The PIC16f84/a is quite and old chip, it has been used for a long time by the
hobbyist market but is certainly less feature rich and lacks the memory size
that other newer devices have.
> My
> main purpose with this project is to construct midi input devices).
I have very little experience with MIDI, however from what I remember it's a
simple serial protocol. As such it might make sense to look for a chip with a
USART so as at least some of the timing requirements can be dealt with
without requiring timing loops in software.
I learnt to use PICs with the PIC16f877a. It is a larger chip, but as a result
it has far more functionality, more I/O pins and more memory for programs.
> I
> have been looking at various pic programming beds, and I am thinking
> that maybe the Silicon Chip PIC Programmer and testbed (available from
> Dick Smith Electronics
> (http://www.dse.com.au/cgi-bin/dse.storefront/
> 42a7f8320937f6462740c0a87f9c06fa/Product/View/K3603) is probably the
> way to go. Has any one else had any experience with this programmer
> (either in Australia or elsewhere), and
I'm afraind I haven't.
At work (uni) I am fortunate enough to have access to a PICStart Plus, at home
I use a very simple programmer. I have been working on documenting this at
"http://www.warpedlogic.co.uk" along with some basic documentation about PIC
development - It is very much work in progress, slow progress.
I tend to use a breadboard beyond that or in house development boards.
> can they tell me wether I may
> program a pic16f84 with this bed in conjunction with the gnupic/gpasm
> tools?
I am fairly confident that it should work fine :-)
> Is the choice of a pic bed and the compiler tools fairly
> arbitrary, as long as they can both do the same microcontroller?
I work with Linux. Thus microchip's own tools are a little out of my reach...
I guess you will find the same problem working with OS X.
Gpasm is a good cross platform assembler (and linker and has a good related
bebugger and...).
I tend to use SDCC, a C compiler for microcontrollers. Depends whether you
want to write in assembler or C. There are also a number of proprietory C
compilers available (some of which willl work on Macs) but these can cost
quite a bit of money. I also tend to use PIC18 components at uni, which are
more compiler friendly and can be run at higher clock speeds.
The choice of development board I guess is kinda arbitrary. I tend to try and
find a good programmer that can program many different devices (for
flexibility) and build my own development boards, however I also did a degree
in Mechanical/Electrical Engineering.
Different boards may utilise certain pins a little differently some may use
one port for LEDs another use that port for input switches. So it will have
some effect on the end result, but by and large this won't be a problem - as
long as the chip at the heart of it is suitable.
> Thank
> you very very much for your time, and I apologise in advance if theses
> questions aren't for this list, or my terminology is a bit out of whack
> (I'm very new!).
>
Sorry if I have raised more questions than I have answered! I hope I have
helped more than hindered.
Martyn
- --
Martyn Welch ####@####.####
PGP Key : http://ubicomp.lancs.ac.uk/~martyn/pgpkey/
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