I want to use a PIC to control a stepper motor and check that it has moved.
The problem that I see is that if I have a 400 step motor and a 1200 encoder(if
one exists)
that every time a send a pulse to my stepper control board to move the motor one
 step I am going to
get back 3 pulses from a encoder. How can I firstly count pulses using a PIC and
 secondly how can I count the three pulses back  when the
PIC is already doing an operation (the stepper pulse signal).
I can not think of how to do this.
I have one hardware type solution and that is to feed the encoders output into a
 counter and then use the pic to read the counter value and
then reset the counter every time but I'm sure that there must be some way to do
 this with the just the pic.
Speed is not a issue with the system as the motor will not be moving very quickl
y.
I am new to the PIC thing so please don't shout if this is dead easy to do.

Thanks & Regards

Gary