Simon-Thijs de Feber wrote:
>Look at this :
>
>http://www.lancos.com/prog.html
>


Simon, thanks for the pointer. This is a very nice full-featured
commercial programmer, but not quite what I was after, which was
just a little "free" tool that I could download into a PIC in 2
minutes and use immediately one time.

I checked the snipp.asm code on piclist.com from Tony Kubek. It
is clearly professionally written code and very nice, but also
not what I need. It accesses internal EEPROM rather than external,
has empty RS232 routines, and there is no indication is has ever
been verified independently. Basically it is a code fragment
and not a "tool". I was hoping no to have to build my own tool,
rather to find something working and already proven.

You know, in retrospect, I wonder whether the piclist community
hasn't totally gone off in the wrong direction here. Instead of
offering disembodied code segments and pushing for open-source
universal programmers which entail months and months of work,
maybe we would be better served if we concentrated on the
following:

1 - "Complete" running example programs for ALL the standard PIC
    controllers that would contain a good mix of the common operations
    - interrupts, RS232, A/D, I2C, timer fcns, command processing,
    etc. This would really make it easy for newbies to get into
    any PIC of their choice. Download a completely working source
    file, assemble, program and go - rather than grab a bunch of
    disembodied code fragments written in several different dialects.

2 - "Tools" - small, complete, and verified utility programs that
    perform certain targeted functions, like I2C and SPI EEPROM
    read/write, RS232 comms at all baud rates to test links,
    programs to exercise/test proto h.w., etc. These tools could
    be offered as both source and/or hex, and people could download
    them and program into a PIC and have them running in a matter
    of minutes. They would only need be available for about 3 cpus
    - '84, '873/876, '877 - covering major pinouts. They would have
    already been verified by others, and known to work properly.

We seem to have both ends of the spectrum discussed a lot on
piclist, but where is the middle ground? Maybe it's here somewhere
and I haven't found it.

[still looking for an I2C tool].

best regards,
- dan michaels
www.oricomtech.com
========================

--
http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us!
email listserv@mitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body