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

I think you're going to get a lot further with a stamp than you would
starting out with PIC's.  While its not impossible to go 0-Assembler over
night, it can be quite a daunting task.  The price of getting started with
stamps and getting started with PIC's is probably quite similar.  A
hobbiest pic programmer itself is about 100-200 bucks.  While pic micros
are much cheaper, for R&D and quickee one offs, I still use stamps myself.
Its just plain old simpler to deal with.

Get the stamp development system without the documentation (its online),
but make sure and get one of parallaxes carrier boards.  They make life a
lot simpler.  Once you get the hang of the Stamp and/or hit a performance
limitation you can move up.  There is quite a steep learning curve starting
with limited knowledge and going straight to an embedded micro system.  The
truth of the matter is that starting out there isn't a lot you can do with
a PIC that can't be done with a STAMP.  Some of the things you will miss
are the flexibility of the different PIC micros and some real time
intensive features like interrupts and direct access to clocks.

Well, good luck.  If you decide you must learn PIC's from the start, I'd go
with the 16F84 as you won't need an eraser and I believe can build your own
programmer.

-E