Hmmm... I seemed to have generated a lot of comments... From: "Alan B. Pearce" > On the ICD line of thought, would it be worth coming up with software that > ran on a PC (or whatever host) that handled the ICD interface instead of > using a separate Micro the way Microchip do their ICD units. The only reason > I can see for going that way is the high voltage generator, and that is not > necessarily needed, especially as we are considering using LVP. This always seemed to be the ideal to me, but I believe that doing this would take a hellish amount of software. Anybody interested in a challenge? From: "Tony Nixon" > > Sorry, I meant to say that I would like to see the PCB equipped with a > > series of pins so that it can be plugged into a breadboard, with the > > PICmicro MCU installed and the applications run from it. > > Sounds like the ROMzap PCB and bootloader concept. In many ways what is being discussed has been done before - What I think will be the most valuable outcome of this effort is coming up with a single programmer/ICD/bootloader that everyone can agree to and get behind and support rather than there being multiple approaches. From: "Sean Alcorn (SYD)" > This is starting to get away from our initial idea. We will build a > programmer in our Taiwan facility at little or no profit. We just need > to kow what the hell we are going to build. :-) > > > I'm recommending against a prep-programmed chip simply because of the > > cost > > and logistics involved. > > We can program inhouse. We program from 10 to 10000 pieces at a time, no > problem. > > > Some people have said that they are willing to sell > > the kit at cost with no profit. Does this mean that they will buy parts > > programmed by somebody like Future-Active or Digi-Key? I've clipped the rest. Sean, please don't think that I was trying to put you or your company down. From your reply it sounds like you have thought things through. Over the years, I have been involved with more than a half dozen small companies with ideas for more than a dozen small products. Over two thirds of these companies/individuals didn't have a clue in how to manufacture and sell a product - they thought that most products were ridiculously overpriced and they could do it for no profit and help out hobbyists/students. For all but two of these start ups, I was able to convince them to make a spreadsheet of what their costs would be. One of the people turned out to be a scam artist trying to get money from me and the other guy went on to loose $10K. For the other start ups, I ended up investing about a half week's worth of time helping them plan the parts ordering, kitting, manufacturing and shipping. In none of these cases, when they saw what had to be invested, did the product go through. The successes I've had are with people who've gone in saying they want to make a profit. It's been a minimal profit with most of the contingency spent, but nobody ended up loosing anything. So, now when I hear that somebody is going to do something without profit or very minimal profit, I try to duck with one hand on my wallet. From: "James Newton, webmaster" > Myke, was that an offer to take over as the editor of the > http://www.piclist.com/begin page? Please? Let me think about it. I would be willing to give it an overhaul, but I would like somebody to deal with the day to day stuff. > I must also say that I don't see building the ICD as all that > hard... given a good tutorial, pre-programmed chips and a ready > made PCB, but perhaps that would be a better SECOND step where a > basic programmer for the chip used in the ICD would be a better > FIRST step. Josh Koffman's tagline articulates my thoughts on this more eloquently than I could: > A common mistake that people make when trying to design something > completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete > fools. > -Douglas Adams > Finally, I can agree that all the existing programmers require > some effort on the part of the beginner, but I honestly don't see > that a new design could be any better. I would AGAIN encourage > people to improve, produce, or better document the EXISTING > designs. Please don't burn cycles re-inventing the wheel when > there are so many good designs that need better documetation, > examples, improvement and PCBs. I think we're coming to this conclusion... From: "shawnmulligan" > This whole idea has grown so much further than the idea that Sean and I had > last weekend. The original idea included the PCB and parts for a programmer, > a couple of well documented starter programs with included hex files and > perhaps a roadmap to the information available on the PICList and the > Internet. > > The idea was to develop a small/inexpensive package that would overcome that > first hurdle for the beginner: getting that first PIC programmed -- and > further, to offer a programmer and documentation that would move the > beginner from the 16F84 to the 'F628 or '877. > > The project that has evolved probably won't see reality as it's too much for > any one to commit to, but the original idea could. Sean has offered to > produce the board and I and many others have offered to distribute it. Costs > are minimal, benefits are large. I'm probably more responsible for making this whole process more complex than anybody else. Actually, what I would like to do is to minimize this as much as possible - there are a lot of good thoughts on what makes the best learning tool/environment/process. Personally, I would be happy with a simple, reliable programmer that will work on the majority of PCs out there without requiring significant tweaking, a PIC16F627, PICC Lite running under MPLAB to start off the new user in getting hardware up and running without having to understand banks and much of the PICmicro MCU architecture and move on to assembly language and other parts from there. From: "Brendan Moran" > Now, as to this ICD thing, I think that there's a better way of doing > it that should make everyone happy. The main complaint has been > software compatability, I think. Hear me out for a moment, I think I > have something here. > > Would you believe a bootloader cum ICD that all works from an ASCII > dumb terminal? > > Here's my idea: use a PIC as an interface to the PIC. Use something > cheap with a hardware UART, and program into it a bootloader, not for > itself, but for the IC it interfaces to. So, you have 2 PICs. One > target, one ASCII interface. This should allow graduationn from ICD > to true HVP entirely seamlessly. The interface PIC would handle all > ASCII interfacing, and not be directly programmable except through an > ASCII command for updating firmware. This is, basically, the CUMP > idea stripped down for a specific application. It should be cheap > enough... A MAX232, a 16F628? and an 18F452 or 16F877, a few support > components, and away you go! It should work quite nicely, *I* think. Have you seen my "BASIC87x" interpreter for the PIC16F877 (you can take a look at it at http://www.myke.com/mbaspg1.htm)? This essentially does what you are describing although it cannot program another device. This really brings home James' point that what we want is probably out there, we just have to agree to it and work at supporting it. From: "Byron A Jeff" > Our true two goals: painlessly getting beginning users started and providing > enough infrastructure on the platform to provide long term usage, are both > acheivable with only a moderate amount of hardware. And since Sean is planning > on shipping completely assembled units, there's no complexity issues in terms > of assembly for the end user. So we can add more and get even more benefit. I snipped the rest. This comes back to the level of complexity issues - are we looking at a programmer that does everything or one that introduces somebody to developing PICmicro MCU application development and let them decide where to go from there. Personally, I tend to lean toward very simple but this is something that should be discussed and agreed to. From: "jumanji" and From: "Les Otter" I'll paraphrase, but what I think you are saying is that you would like a series of kits that the newbie could build on. My comment are: that once the first few projects are built, I would expect the newbie to be able to find their own parts and build them into a circuit. Along with this, you are approaching my idea of making a PCB that could be plugged into a breadboard and running the application from the programmer. I like the idea for a PICmicro MCU with a large number of pins (ie the PIC16F877), but I don't think it will work very well for something like a PIC16F84/PIC16F627. Comments back? From: "Byron A Jeff" > Think about the concept of a design board with common I/O failities. Something > like the old Radio Shack 60 in 1 experimenters board. Except for PICs. With > a rich enough subset of facilities (LCD,LED,serial, switches, pots, IR) and > development tools (bootloader, ICSP programmer, bootloader cloner) it'll > provide a backdrop that novices and experts alike can use as a springboard > for project development. I think its a good idea if it can be done cheaply enough. From: "Sean Alcorn (SYD)" > OK, It would be EASY for me to buy another Hard Disk or pay for new hardware > for the list or whatever. But I have seen that people have done this in the > past. This is MY way of contributing. If you read my earlier posts, I said > that I feel the "Gurus" of the list spend FAR to much time answering > questions about "first PIC" and "which Programmer" and "Why won't my > programmer work?" - If the list got itself into a position where it only > supported one programmer, the aforementioned gurus could simply say "Sorry > Bud, go out and buy the XYZ programmer from your nearest distributor - it's > only $XX and if you still have problems, we'll help. The list would have to > be a little cruel to be kind, but I think follow on effects would be that > list members with LESS experience than the gurus - such as myself - could > start helping the newbies - instead of consuming the gurus' valuable time. > Because we are working to a "STANDARD" and will have probably read all the > answers a dozen times by then. This is my motivation for doing this as well. I would like to have one standard that we can all point to. This last point is a good one to end on because reading over the emails, I'm sure that I have appeared wishy-washy on what I want. Like pretty much everyone, I really don't have anything to gain or loose except to have a much better answer to "How do I find out more about the PIC?" which I get 10 to 15 times per week. This process is fascinating for me as I'm curious to see what the consensus is and find out if there are options that I haven't considered or approaches that I haven't followed that I should be looking at. myke -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.