After extensive discussions with Shawn, Sean, Geert, Brenden, Jason, Roman,
Myke, Olin, Vasile, Wouter, James, and others I think that it's time to put
an informal summary on the table in an attempt towards finalizing a design.
As with all committee generated designs it will consist of a set of compromises
that will make it a jack of many trades, and probably a master of none. Also
as to be expected not every design feature that each person wants will be
present.

I fully expect that we shall continue the debate. All comments are welcome.
All I ask is that you please trim to only the specific item that you are
referring to. I plan to post a copy of the original document on my website
for reference at http://www.finitesite.com/d3jsys/designer.html

So without further adieu...

THE PICLIST DEVELOPMENT PROJECT

THE PROBLEMS: The PICLIST is a huge loosly organized group of professionals,
hobbyists, and especially novice users connected by a ever growing mailing
list, website (James), and echoed newsgroup. The Microchip PIC family of
microcontrollers (uC) has wide industry acceptance due to Microchip's
combination of innovative technology, wide availability, and extremely
reasonable costs.

One activity that the list spends a significant amount of time performing as
a public service is the introduction of PIC information, software, and
programming hardware to the novice community. As such there are any number
of resources available from both list members and offlist.

There are a number of reoccurring issues that a prevalent from this activity.
First is simply responding to the huge number of requests on essentially the
same issues. The second is a lack of consensus on what to recommend to the
novice user in terms of actual PIC hardware and development support.
Specifically the 16F84 vs new PIC debate, and the homebuilt/TLVP/WISP628/NOPPP/
WARP13/PICSTART+/et al programmer issue.

Another ongoing issue with hobby designers such as Byron [Ed Note: I'll refer
to myself in the 3rd person so that responses won't have to be edited] who
moan and groan about the infrastructure required to work on new projects.

THE PROPOSAL:
A couple of week ago Shawn Mulligan proposed that a project be developed that
can address some of these issues. Sean Alcorn quickly and graciously offered
to produce, assemble, package, and ship complete products at cost. Several
members offered to serve as distributors. All that was needed was a product
design. After some discussion several points reached a state of consensus:

* The product would be fully assembled, and not a kit.
* The PIC assembly would be the target language for development.
* The product would carry some type of breadboard prototyping.
* The product would have a mechanism for programming PIC parts
* The product would have some type of I/O expansion capability
* The product will carry a CD composed of software, tutorial documentation, and
  projects geared towards the novice to intermediate user.

However there has been considerable debate as to what specifications the
product should be design toward. There are three basic forms proffered:

* The traditional style inexpensive PIC programmer with one or more
   programming sockets (Roman, Olin, Jason, Sean).
* A small assembled module, the PICbase, that consists of a PCB populated with
  a PIC, regulator, oscillator, and I/O expansion and programming interface.
  (Geert)
* An all in one prototyping board, the PICLIST DESIGNER (PLD), that contains
  a PIC16F877A, a set of common I/O devices, and I/O expansion port, and an
  ICSP programming interface. (Byron)

An interlude
------------

I have to get out of here, so I'll leave it here unfinished. I'll pick up the
rest of the discussion in another post later. I'd like to hear comments about
the issues and the contenders.

BAJ

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