PIC newbie questions

[Rich Grise]

I'm just kind of wondering about just how easy a PIC is to actually
use. From what I've gleaned from a cursory scan of what pops up on
searches and websites, it looks like I can get an 8-pin dip that I
could just plug into a ProtoBoard, with maybe an RS-232 chip, and
an output buffer, and have a whole system ready to go, programmed
by the serial port from the host computer?

Please correct me if you'd need more than that. (well, power supply,
of course)

Thanks!
Rich

 

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Goto http://www.voti.nl/swp/index.html and read that
as a starter.

Jan-Erik.

 

[Robert Monsen]

Its actually easier than that. You can buy a working system from microchip
for around $40 US, that has a USB programmer for the flash 8 pin (and 14
pin) chip, a bunch of tutorials, and a PIC12F675 chip (thats the 8 pin one).
Take a look for PICFirst on the www.microchip.com site.

Also, there are numerous other programmer designs you can build or buy, lots
of support from various newsgroups and help on the PIC site in the form of
tech notes that can be used to guide the design of various projects.

I'm raving here because I just got the PICFirst system, and have been
happily building various projects with it. Much cheaper/easier than using
discrete logic or CPLD/FPGA logic.

Regards