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:
Byron A Jeff ####@####.####
Date:
16 Jun 2005 16:00:21 +0100
Message-Id: <20050616150006.GA3189@cleon.cc.gatech.edu>
On Thu, Jun 16, 2005 at 11:15:49PM +0930, Stuart Woolford wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> Thank you all very much for your invaluable responses. I did not know
> that about the obsolescence of the 16f84. Just most of the info
> regarding pic programming refers to it, so I thought.......
I know. That's one of the reasons that I wrote my 16F628 and 16F88
comparison pages. There's a lot of inertia on the internet.
> The kits from dontronics.com look good I guess, and reasonably priced,
> and being from Australia, I don't have to pay for shipping (much:). I'm
> still not sure on the software. I have had a look at Rick Alther's pp,
> but I'm still not 100% sure where it fits in (is it a compiler, or the
> USB driver/software interface?). It seems OS X is some what limited in
> this department. Anyway,
> thank you all again for your advice, it's good to start a project with
> the correct preparation.
Stuart,
Don't be hasty on getting your programmer. You really need to do some
research for exactly the reasons that you outlined above.
The programmer isn't the key component in getting this operation started.
The key components are the software and the interfaces.
Since this is a MIDI operation you should take a good hard look at the
MIDIBox OS located here: http://www.ucapps.de
This OS is specifically designed for building MIDI based applications using
a PIC 18F452. In addition it has a bootstrap loader that can load new
programs via the MIDI interface itself! In addition there is a description
on how to the use the MAC to upload SysEx messages to a MIDIBox based
application. All you would need is a 18F452 bootstrapped with the MidiBox OS
bootloader.
I seriously advise you to evaluate all of your options before getting
started on this project. The MIDIBox seems like a perfect solution for
what you need to get done. Evaluate it carefully before pulling the
trigger on a programmer.
This page here discusses how to interface the Wisp628 to a Mac:
http://magellan.colorado.edu/~nwanua/howtos.html
Wouter also sells USB to serial connectors. He already has a posted report
that the M-USB-SERIAL-2 USB/serial cable that he sells works with OSX 10.3
Here are the reasons to seriously consider a Wisp628:
1) The XWisp software in Python is known to work on the Mac
2) Reports that the USB to serial cable have been shown.
3) The price of the cable and the Wisp628 are comparable to the KITS 149
Hope this helps,
BAJ
