Oh! I see.
Thanks for the explanation, anyway.

Regards,
Andres Tarzia
Technology Consultant, SMART S.A.
e-mail: atarzia@smart.com.ar


-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Burch [mailto:mburch@PINNACLET.COM]
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 1999 13:20
To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: multifunction ICSP programmer


Andres,

Sorry to have been misleading: you are correct in that there are no secret
PIC functions hiding from you. :)  What I was referring to is the way my
programmer piggybacks RS232 signals onto the programming clock/data lines
when they are not in use, thus allowing the application circuit to
communicate (through the in-circuit programmer) with the computer where the
development is going on... so if you were going to sacrifice pins B6 & B7
anyway for ICSP use, you can use one or both of them for serial
communications back to the PC (configurable on the programmer side) for
debugging purposes. It's not as good as an ICE or ICD, but it is cheap and
easy and it sure beats keeping half a dozen /JW parts around for continual
erasing and reprogramming. The serial comms functionality especially has
proven quite useful for letting the application circuit tell the PC what
it's up to during development (one of the things I designed it to program
here in-house is a 0.5" square monitoring device that's too small to have
any unnecessary LEDs etc... difficult to debug!).

Anyway, it is a nice cheap & useful device to have in-house, and we are
considering producing a few for sale to see how well they go over.

Cheers,
mcb


At 09:10 AM 9/14/99 -0300, Andres Tarzia wrote:
>Matt,
>
>Could you point me in the right direction for finding information on this
>"hidden" feature of the PIC firmware?
>I've never seen it mentioned in any other place.
>
>Thank you!
>
>Regards,
>Andres Tarzia
>Technology Consultant, SMART S.A.
>e-mail: atarzia@smart.com.ar

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