Hi all,

I attended the Microchip seminar yesterday. Overall, it was quite a good
day. Even got a 16F877 to play with.

I have to admit, when the 16C8XXX series comes out, it is going to make
PIC programming a lot easier. Its nearly akin to getting the flat memory
model to work with on a PC, plus addressable stack, W Reg etc, seperate
PORT in/out data latches.

I was looking through the data sheet for the 16F87X chips also, and it
struck me that the code protect scheme for these chips seems to provide
a hinderence to one of it's newest features.

My idea of code protect is to secure your intellectual property from
those who wish to 'use' it themselves.

In this chip, though, they have provided a mechanism by which you can
program it's own ROM from within your code. It would be a very simple
task to write an RS232 routine and use the USART to receive the data via
a PC or whatever to program itself with a resident boot loader.

BUT, according to the data sheet, you can't do this on a code protected
part. You can only use this feature on unprotected ROM. It would seem to
me that Microchip would have an extremely flexible part if you could
program 'under' the code protection, but you could not read this code
afterwards. After all, isn't that what it is all about.

--
Best regards

Tony

PicNPoke - Multimedia 16F84 Beginners PIC Tools.

http://www.picnpoke.com
Email picnpoke@cdi.com.au