I just took a look at the data sheet for this part, and think it
might fit the bill for a design I have been trying to get to for
the past several months.

Essentially, its a timer-controller for some mechanical equipment.
It must display a time, have it programmable for up to 59 minutes,
59 seconds.  When the time expires, it turns on some outputs, watches
some inputs, and then resets and begins the cycle again.

Being that the timer must be programmable, I was thinking of using the
16F84 to do the timing job, and some 16C7x type (need plenty of I/O)
for the controller.

Since this new breed of chips has EEPROM for data, I should be able
to roll this all into this part.  I am planning on using a serial LCD
setup, I bought one of the Scott Edwards units, to at least get rolling
on that part.

OK, now for some questions, just to make sure I am not heading down the
wrong path.

This part has a serial port.  So does the LCD pack.  Is it as simple as
it looks to just connect them up together?  Just send the serial data
down the data lines? Who/where does the serial clock stuff get setup?

Since I want to decrement several 'timers' at the same time, it would seem
prudent to use the TMR0 input.  I've never bothered to use TMR before, and
was reading thru some old mail about them (I save everything that I think
might be important later), so I can set it up, given the correct clock
frequency, to have it roll around every 1 second and so my main loop is
doing two things - watching for a mode change or watching for this TMR to
roll over and thus I then decrement my internal count value (just a register)
and send the new value down the serial port to display on the LCD's.

Thats probably enuf for now. Any comments would be appreciated.

hcooper@es.com