On Sun, 10 Nov 2002, Olin Lathrop wrote:

> > I got this code of the net ...
>
> Looks like you got about what you paid for it.  I don't know who this Eric
> Smith guy is that claims to have written it, but I would stay away from
> anything else that has his name on it.  There are too many individual
> things I don't like in that code to list here, so here are just a few
> highlights:
>
> > ; Copyright 1997 Eric Smith
>
> Consider this a warning message.

Chuckle.

Eric Smith is a genius. He's done stuff with PICs that you and most others
can only dream about. I won't even try to defend this copy of code
you have criticized. Chances are, it was written 8+ years ago and last
touched 5 years ago (1997). It was probably written for the 16C64 at a
time the 16F84 was just becoming popular and the F877 was some Microchip
Engineer's fantasy.

Check out the OJ Muta-matic.

---

I can say one thing in agreement with you- I've yet to see a decent free
UART driver for the PIC on the web. Even Fr. Thomas McGahee's, which is
the best I've seen, has some problems when applied to real systems. His is
really intended as a Tutorial - and it is excellent in that regard. It
points out many of the pit falls associated with interfacing with PIC's
USART. But for a real system where serial data is coming in and going out
while the PIC is busy doing stuff, you need to be able to handle these
tasks simultaneously. There are many approaches to this problem, and
depending on the system requirements each has its merit. I tend to prefer
interrupt driven code with circular buffers for the transmit and the
receive processes. If memory is an issue, then polled drivers may be more
appropriate. Maybe someone one day will release a driver based on his
code...


Scott

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