On Mon, Sep 10, 2001 at 10:41:55AM +0000, James Padfield wrote:
> >Agreed. Then you will definitely want to switch to 16F628. At 25 parts on
> >digikey the price drops to $2.21 each. You can buy 25 of them for the price
> >of Stamp Starter Kit.
>
> I'll probably only buy single chips. I certainly don't want 25, I'll never
> use them.

They are still only $3.88 in singles. The breakover point is 14 chips.
Essentially you can get 11 chips for free if you buy 14 of them.

>
>
> >The F876 and F877 are the top end of the family. The lower end of the
> >family
> >(870,871,872) definitly come in lower in price than the 16F84A.
>
> I like alot of I/O ports for various things, thats why I was looking at the
> F876/F877. The built in ADC was a factor too. And a guy here advised me to
> look at them too, as I wanted them reprogrammable. I'll have to check out
> Wouter's comparison page before I buy another one. As it is, I'm stuck with
> a F84A for the time being...

There is a significant cost jump when you add the extra I/O pins. Both the
16F877 and the 16F874 (40 pin parts) are in the $9 range at digikey.

However if you can live with 28 pins, essentially the addition of port C,
then the ones listed above will come out cheaper than the 16F84A

>
>
> >And the programmer is simpler....
>
> Do you have a link to that? Is there a good list anywhere of the different
> programmers, and what chips they are suitable for programming?

Try the piclist.com page on the subject:

http://www.piclist.com/techref/microchip/devprogs.htm

Also for low voltage programming only you can check out my Trivial LVP
programmer: http://www.finitesite.com/d3jsys

BAJ

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