Hi Justin,

First off,let me welcome you to the rewarding world of electronics in
general,and especially PICs. You will find this list to be your single BEST
resource for all things electronic, again especially PICs. I say this from
my own experiences here.

If you have any real perseverence (and it sounds as if you do, from the
number of people you have asked), I think the best thing for you to do is
to set yourself up with a PIC 16F84 (about $5), an inexpensive pre-built
PIC programmer (about $50), a 16F84 datasheet (free, from Microchip's web
page), a solderless breadboard, a crystal, two capacitors, a resistor, and
an LED (all together about $10). With these materials and the help of this
list, you should have the most basic PIC test program (to blink an LED on
and off) running in a day or two.
Ain introductory PIC book would probably also be a good idea.

Once you have this working, you will at least know the basics of how you
hook up a PIC. You can then use the introductory PIC book to learn
assembly. Think of a simple program to write (i.e., to blink the LED 5
times and then wait 2 seconds ,for example) and try to do it.

PIC assembly programming is different than programming in ASM for most
micros because a successful,working program can consist of a very small
number of simple instructions (10,for example).

Here are a few sites to visit to look for possible sources for the above
materials:

DigiKey http://www.digikey.com
Wirz Electronics http://www.wirz.com
MicroEngineering Labs (makers of the EPIC programmer,my favorite
inexpensive programmer) http://www.melabs.com/mel/home.htm
ProPic2 http://www.propic2.com
Microchip (the PIC's manufacturer) http://www.microchip.com

There are many,many others and I'm sure some people on this list will offer
some more.

I have used the Basic Stamp and it might speed up some people's learning
process by a small amount of time, but I don't think it is worth the
expense in this case.

If you are looking for a transitional language between BASIC and ASM, C is
definately the choice. PASCAL is somewhat similar,but not quite as
low-level. I think that PIC asm is so simple to learn use,however, that it
probably wouldn't be worth learning C first,although learning C is a very
good idea in general.

Sean





At 07:56 PM 5/1/99 -0400, you wrote:
>ok, i'll make this quick, i have no idea were to get started in
>microcontrollers. To put it bluntly, i don't even have a basic
>understanding of electronics. I've read a couple beginner's books but i
>don't know more than very simple digital stuff, although i know a good
>deal about simple analog stuff. I was thinking that maybe i could get a
>stamp to start out on, since they seem more user-friendly than PICs,
>since i actually had some trouble programming pascal, so if i have
>trouble in pascal, then i know i'll have trouble writing a program in
>ASM or hex, or binary, or whatever. I like basic and i like how stamps
>are set up, they look like they have a good introduction to it, but it
>seems kinda pricey, that is why i am thinking about pics, since i know
>all the professionals use them, and they're much more powerful than
>stamps, but the complexedy of them turns me off. I've tried several
>newsgroups about this and none of them can give me a straight answer
>about what i should try, so can you?
>This is my first day on this group so sorry if something like this is in
>an faq or something, ps where's the faq
>
>--
>Last night as I lay in bed looking at the stars I thought: "Where the
>hell is the ceiling?!"
>
|
| Sean Breheny
| Amateur Radio Callsign: KA3YXM
| Electrical Engineering Student
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