Justin,

You've gotten some very good advice, but I'll throw in my $.01 worth since
I was on your position not too long ago. First it's not clear whether
you're just starting in electronics or already have some electronics
experience and are simply moving into uCs.

If your just getting started, tooling up can be an expensive proposition
even without adding uCs into the picture.  Over the last year I've spent
quite a bit (~$1,500) buying things like a good DMM, soldering iron, chips,
clips, protoboards, discrete components, programmers, blah, blah, blah.

I bought a Stamp for the same reason you are considering them. It seemed
like a quick way to get my feet wet.  Unfortunately, the project I had in
mind was too much for the Stamp to handle ( mainly because the Stamp has no
interrupts and I was dropping chars on my serial receive ) and it's now
collecting dust.

Here's my advice. _If_ you have the money, go with the PIC and buy a
commercial programmer that can handle a wide range of PICs.  There are also
BASIC compilers available for the PIC if that's the route you wish to go.
 There are several freeware C and Pascal compilers available but
unfortunately most of these support only a small subset of the PIC line (
PIC16F84 ).

The CCS C compiler is a decent compiler for the money ( about $99 ) but
many on this list will tell you that it's buggy.

The 16F84 is a popular chip to start with, but it lacks peripherals like
PWM, USARTs, capture ports, etc.  I have no experience with it, but the new
16F877 has generated quite a bit of excitement on this list lately. My
understanding is that it's very similar to the 84 but adds some sorely
needed features.

To further complicate matters, there are many uC manufacturers making
inroads against the PIC.  The two most notable are the Scenix chips and the
Atmel AVR.  The general consensus seems to be that these chips offer more
performance/features for the price, but available info/support groups are
not nearly as prolific as for the PIC.  I personally have been leaning
toward the AVR chips because they offer so much more than the PIC for so
much less. However, I'm not sure I would have felt comfortable going
straight into AVRs without the experience I've gained by using PICs.

Here's the route I finally settled on.  First, I bought a PICStart Plus at
roughly $200. I chose this programmer because it supports every PIC chip
that I'm aware of.  Second, I bought the CCS compiler because 1) I've been
programming in C for years 2) the price was right and 3) it supported a
broad range of chips ( but not all ). With a programmer and a compiler,
datasheets and MPLAB ( free from MicroChip ), a few discreets and
electronics tools and your ready to let the smoke out of a few PICs !

Good luck and welcome to the list !

Eric


On Saturday, May 01, 1999 6:57 PM, Justin Headley
[SMTP:jheadley@CENTRALVA.NET] 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?!"