> I can afford to waste a few KB or even a few MB of
> memory on a PC or a UNIX (snip)
> You simply don't have that luxury on a PIC.

That is nonsense, or more to the point: it does not always hold. As I
stated many times before: total cost = engineering cost + unit cost *
number of units. So depending on how the figures are either engineering
or unit cost will be dominant (in some cases both). When engineering
cost dominates, buy big PICs and whatever programming environment that
gets the job done cheaply (development cost wise). When unit cost
dominates, select the cheapest chip that will probably fit (and consider
non-PIC chips because existing experience is not important!), and get a
very good asm programmer (probably hire one) to cram the application
into the chip.

Sow when you want to give anyone a meaningfull advice, first try to
figure out in which of the two situations he (she) will be. A hobbyist
is not likely to be in the 'unit cost dominates' situation, unless he
values his time very very low.

Wouter van Ooijen

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Van Ooijen Technische Informatica: www.voti.nl
consultancy, development, PICmicro products

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